


Where Demons Hide

by sultrysweet



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Agenda, Dark Past, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Intrigue, Mystery, Romance, Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-02-15 07:57:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2221440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrysweet/pseuds/sultrysweet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something sinister this way comes. A silent threat lurks in the shadows of Storybrooke, Maine and Regina’s the target. Though she doesn’t particularly want to work—let alone talk—with Emma, Regina has no choice but to accept help wherever she can get it or be haunted to the breaking point by secrets of her past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: at the end of the chapter, in italics, there's a nightmare involving descriptions of rape/non-con. If it's not your thing or it is a trigger for you, you can skip the italicized portion after the third line break. There will be more mentions of rape/non-con in future chapters and I'll be sure to include warnings for each chapter they're in. I tried not to put too much detail into them, but I understand it can still be plenty triggering. 
> 
> First attempt at a dark fic. This is definitely a Swan Queen story, but it's slow burn. I also posted two playlists for this fic on 8tracks: http://8tracks.com/sultrysweet. One's a light playlist of songs that revolve around Emma and Regina's relationship, pretty much all from Emma's POV. The other is a dark playlist of songs more focused on Regina and her dark past come back to haunt her, mostly the original character/antagonist I have for this story, but also includes a certain nightmare inducing late husband.

Though there was a breeze in the chilly night air, the candle remained lit. The flame flickered with every step, but held steady enough as leaves and twigs crunched under foot. The woods were vast, but at a slightly hurried pace it wouldn’t take long to reach the park. From there, the paved streets of Storybrooke were all within minutes of each other.

Black gloves covered unshaken hands as they held a white candle and a small, almost wallet-size photo. The sky revealed a full moon when the gray clouds would clear and the small town was bathed in its light, the shadows more blue than black but still terribly dark. Salt tainted the crisp air from the water and the clock tower ticked above the library as it reached 11:30pm. The streets were quiet and not a soul was out, except for the one holding the candle.

From the woods to a main road, feet traveled with purpose and the dark figure moved with determination. Past a few houses and shops, past the bed and breakfast, past another residential area, and finally a destination was reached. The lights inside were all off and the black, wrought iron gate hardly squeaked as it was unlocked and swiftly pushed open.

Without leaving a single trace, the home was entered. Dark, partially dirty work boots made no sound on the stairs they climbed and the rest of the place remained completely still aside from the soft sounds from the candle’s dancing flame. The intruder hesitated in the hallway not too far from one of the five closed doors on the second floor.

The intruder slipped the picture free from up against the side of the candle and held it with one hand as the candle stayed firmly gripped in the other.

“You are gone forever, but through this spell, her dreams to which you will come,” the intruder whispered over the candle, the subject in clear view as the incantation was spoken.

With the spell invoked, the intruder quickly and quietly opened the nearest door. Inside revealed a monochromatic color palette and a sleeping form dressed in a silk pajama set on the bed. As the intruder approached the bed, the candle’s flame was extinguished. The shadowed figured hovered above the former Queen while the wick of the candle cooled and the picture used in the spell was slipped into a front coat pocket.

Her olive skinned face was serene enough. She didn’t look pained or troubled and if she was dreaming at all then it must have been pleasant enough to keep her from tossing and turning or waking abruptly in the middle of the night.

That was about to change.

Once the wick was cool enough, no smoke emerging, the intruder gently lifted the woman’s pillow and slipped the candle underneath it. No other words were spoken before the intruder exited the room and left everything in the house as it had been found upon entry, including the gate at the end of the pathway. Even on the trip back into the woods, the only sounds heard were the howling wind and footsteps across the walked unpaved trails.

* * *

Emma softly hummed as a warm and subtle smile appeared on her face while her hands cupped the equally warm mug of coffee on the table in front of her. It wasn’t too cold outside, but the overcast weather made it a little cooler than a normal early fall day in Storybrooke. Without even an hour of the sun’s rays beaming down on the town, the temperature tended to drop by at least five degrees. Thankfully, Granny’s Diner was always as warm or as cold as it needed to be when considering the weather. Not to mention the fact that there were enough cold and hot drinks on the menu to satisfy all of the townspeople given any one of the four seasons Storybrooke endured.

Unfortunately, the diner didn’t have anything to stave off the cold caused by an icy glare from Regina Mills. That was an inevitable part of Emma’s day if she happened to run into the brunette and, even though they didn’t need to switch weeks taking Henry until the weekend, they happened to cross paths that morning.

Emma had had barely a sip from her steaming mug before Regina had walked in. And just like most of their unexpected encounters, it was like they had a sense for the other because in an instant, their eyes locked. Without fault, that infamous icy glare was directed at Emma and, though she didn’t shrink in her seat, she did grimace a little before she took a second sip of coffee.

Regina held her gaze as she drank from her mug and when she set it back down on the table, someone entered the diner behind Regina. Only then did the brunette look away from her as she focused her attention on the lighter blonde that had just walked in.

An almost platinum blonde braid came into Emma’s view as it hung over the woman’s shoulder and she tensed before the new patron turned from the door and showed her face to the Sheriff.

Regina softened when she looked at the woman who had seemingly come to the diner with her and Emma felt something close to jealousy as she looked at Elsa. It wasn’t just that Regina had suddenly become friends with Elsa after her arrival proved not to be a threat that made her jealous. It was also that Elsa had gained control over her magic before her. That, she knew, was due in large part to Regina.

The brunette had been mentoring her on occasion between Neverland and Elsa’s arrival, but as soon as Emma had brought Marian back with her from the past Regina had put a stop to their blossoming friendship. Maybe blossoming was too sweet, too graceful, of a word to use for how they’d started to become closer. No matter how it had happened, they were finally on the right track to being on each other’s sides, and almost without question. But bring back that person’s soulmate’s dead wife and that friendship sours while that almost-friend talks only about a shared son and who gets him when.

Emma watched as Regina and Elsa settled in at a table across the room, but giving her almost a perfect view of them like Regina knew just how she felt about Elsa being her new best friend. Elsa and Tinker Bell, really, and if Tinker Bell had even the slightest bit of temper before she certainly had one around Emma after Marian was reunited with her family. Even though Emma knew bringing Marian to Storybrooke was the right thing, there was a select group of people who sure knew how to make her feel like pariah for it.

To avoid thinking too much about Regina, or Elsa or Tink, Emma pulled out her phone and sent a message to Henry.

_“Coming to Granny’s for breakfast or are you gonna stay with the grandparents?”_

She set her phone down and left the messaging screen open while she lifted her mug and took another sip, longer than the first two, while she waited for a response.

It didn’t take long before her phone vibrated against the table with a new message, but when she looked at the screen she realized it wasn’t a response from Henry. Instead, it was her dad.

_“Family breakfast. Where are you?”_

Emma sighed as she picked up her phone and typed, _“At Granny’s. Wanna join me?”_

Not long after the message sent, a reply from Henry came in: _Be there soon._

She played with the phone in her hand for a minute or two before the bell above the door jingled and Robin, followed by Roland and then Marian, came inside. Emma dropped her phone on the table and pressed her forehead into her hand. She kept her eyes closed and her head tilted down toward the table for a moment before she collected herself and dropped her hand like she’d dropped her phone.

Robin and his family headed toward her side of the diner with smiles on their faces and Emma politely smiled back. She gave a quick wave to Robin who tipped his head down in a partial nod as his response. The smile Marian directed at her was broader than but just as welcoming as Robin’s as she and her husband ushered Roland into a chair at the table in front of Emma.

For reasons she didn’t understand, because she knew it would be a bad idea, Emma looked over at Regina’s table. The brunette’s eyes were fixated, with a twinge of sadness in them, on Robin. When Ruby stopped by the family’s table to take their order, Regina’s view of Robin blocked, the other woman looked over at Emma. Emma didn’t see anger or a cutting stare in those deep brown eyes. She barely recognized any hurt either. When Regina had first discovered Emma had brought Marian back four months ago, Regina’s eyes were filled with anger and hurt. During those four months, Regina had either learned how to better hide her feelings—which Emma already thought she was pretty good at when she’d first arrived in town over a year ago—or she no longer felt that way about the situation. For all Emma knew, Regina could have slowly been moving on and adjusting to everything. But Emma knew nothing when it came to Regina because the brunette refused to say much to her unless it regarded Henry or the town’s safety. And the town had been quiet once Zelena was out of the picture.

Ruby smiled to Emma on her way to the kitchen to place Robin, Marian, and Roland’s orders and Emma flashed a tight smile back. That smile faded as soon as Ruby had passed her and she looked down at her phone as if it would make her morning either less awkward or go faster.

Just above her direct line of sight, she noticed a small figure turn and hang a little over the back of the chair. Emma looked up and saw Roland stare at her with curiosity as he rested his chin on his fists as he clutched the top of the chair he knelt on. Once he had her attention, he tilted his head to the side and rested a cheek on the back of his hand.

Emma narrowed her eyes as her lips formed a tiny smirk before she mirrored Roland’s curiosity and tilted her head in the opposite direction as she held his gaze.

Roland smiled and tilted his head from his right to his left and waited.

Emma copied him again and tilted her head from her right to her left.

Roland giggled and straightened up, his head no longer tilted as he looked at her with a toothy smile. His laughter and movements, and maybe even the fact that Marian had been watching the entire exchange with a growing smile, caught Robin’s attention and he turned to look at Roland before he turned in his chair and smiled again at Emma.

“I think he rather likes you,” Robin said, still smiling.

“Nah,” Emma said as she kept her eyes on Roland. “He just likes Henry and he knows I know where he is. Isn’t that right?”

Roland’s smile grew and he threw his hands in the air as he joyously shouted, “Henry!”

Robin and Emma chuckled.

Though Roland was much closer to Regina, in the last few months he’d gotten to know Emma a little better because Henry played with Roland whenever they were around each other.

“Where is he,” Roland asked and cocked his head to the side again.

“Coming here,” Emma answered with glittering eyes as she continued to smile at his cuteness.

“Yay!”

Emma looked at him a little longer before she finally let her eyes drift toward Robin and Marian, seated across each other on opposite sides of the table.

“How are you,” she asked them both.

“Good,” Robin nodded as he answered. “We finally moved in to a house a bit further from the woods so Roland’s closer to the children at the school, but we’ve got a big yard to make up for that. So he doesn’t miss the forest too much. He’s been so used to running around in the leaves and things, you know?”

“Yeah. Makes sense,” Emma agreed.

She knew she talked to Robin and Marian with a stiffness she didn’t have with Roland, but the couple didn’t seem to notice it since they kept smiling and exuding a casual demeanor.

“Emma,” Roland called out and captured the blonde’s attention once again.

Before Emma could ask him what he wanted, the boy made a silly face at her. She smirked and stuck her tongue out at him.

He giggled and stuck his tongue out too, but it looked more like he was about to messily lick an ice cream cone than it looked like he was mirroring Emma.

“You’re silly,” she told him.

“No, _you’re_ silly,” he said with another adorable smile and pointed at her.

Emma pretended to think about that before she looked at him again and pulled on her ears while she puffed out her mouth.

“Monkey! Silly Emma.”

Emma relaxed her face just as the bell above the door signaled another arrival, but she didn’t look to see who it was as she nodded and reached over her table to give Roland a high five.

“You got me. I’m silly,” she confessed as she sat back down.

“Morning, Mom,” Henry’s deep voice filled the diner.

Emma turned toward the sound of his voice and immediately noticed he had been referring to Regina upon walking in. Regina’s eyes were on her before she processed Henry’s greeting, but once she had realized Henry had been speaking to her she affectionately smiled at him. As he headed toward Emma’s table, the brunette followed him with her eyes, but avoided eye contact with everyone on that side of the diner. She looked back at Elsa before her eyes could wander too far and accidentally lock onto Emma’s, or anyone else’s really, as she tried not to look at all affected by Emma and Roland’s little display.

Emma’s eyes were torn away from Regina when her parents’ simultaneously warned Henry to be careful. When she looked at her son, she recognized the bundled baby in his arms and smiled at the duo while Snow and David made their way to the table with baby Neal’s car seat and diaper bag.

Henry went right up to Emma and she immediately moved over to the seat against the wall while Henry took her seat.

“Henry,” Roland shouted and climbed down from his chair.

He hurried around Robin’s chair and scampered in front of Snow and David just before they reached the table and he stood beside Henry.

“And Neal,” Roland happily added as he looked down at the baby.

“Hey, Roland,” Henry greeted the smaller boy with a smile.

“Play with me?”

“In a little bit. When I don’t have Neal with me.”

“Okay,” Roland nodded, but stayed firmly in place at Henry’s side.

“Roland, come back over here and let the boy eat,” Robin waved his son back to their table.

“But I want to sit with Henry,” Roland pouted.

“Look who’s suddenly popular,” David said to Henry with a grin.

“And yet I still can’t get any girls to look at me,” Henry replied.

“I’m lookin’ at you,” Emma teased.

“Mom,” Henry drew out the word and grimaced.

David and Emma laughed.

“You know, if you gave Neal to Emma, Roland could sit with you,” Snow gently suggested with a smile. “And you’d still be close to the baby.”

Henry thought it over for a few seconds before he nodded and said, “Yeah, okay.”

Emma sputtered out a few sounds of discomfort and tensed when Henry started to hand Neal off to her. She took her baby brother into her arms slowly and held him awkwardly and stiffly once she had a good handle on him.

While she adjusted herself and baby Neal, Roland climbed into Henry’s lap just as Ruby came over to take the family’s order.

“Hey,” she greeted the newcomers with a chipper tone and a beaming smile. “How’s everyone this morning?”

“Hi, Ruby,” David smiled at her while she rubbed Snow’s shoulder.

“We’re doing great, thank you,” Snow answered.

Ruby looked around at the Charming family and over at Robin and Marian. Her smile never left as she looked at all of them.

“What can I get you guys?”

Neal sneezed and the entire table looked over at him while Emma continued to fidget with him.

“Honey, he’s not going to bite,” Snow explained with a hint of laugh.

“I know,” Emma said as she finally settled, but Neal started to stretch out and wiggle around. “He doesn’t like me.”

“Relax,” David said. “I’m sure he just knows you’re uncomfortable. Loosen up. You’re not gonna hurt him.”

Emma mirthlessly chuckled. “ _You_ might not hurt him. I’m _horrible_ with babies.”

“Don’t you still have memories of taking care of me as a baby,” Henry asked.

“Yeah, but it’s not like Regina really knew what to do with you at first either,” Emma confessed without thinking.

As soon as the words left her mouth, her eyes widened and she looked up at the rest of the table.

Ruby tried and failed terribly to hide her smirk, which was only downturned instead of masked. Snow and David didn’t seem too startled by her comment, but Henry, Robin, and Marian all seemed shocked in their own unique ways.

After a moment, Robin cleared his throat and turned back to Marian. Snow and David shot a quick glance at Robin’s back when he turned, but didn’t make too big a deal out of it before they moved past the awkwardness and focused on Emma again.

“She loved you then, just like she loves you now, and that’s what was important. She figured it out,” Emma—a little late—added.

Henry pursed his lips while a faint smile appeared on his face and he patted Emma’s back.

“Good job,” he joked.

“Shut up,” she muttered.

Baby Neal gurgled and wiggled around a little more as his eyes slowly started to open.

Emma took a deep breath and cradled Neal in one arm while she brought her pinky finger up to his clenched fists. She poked at one of his fists and smiled at him when he looked up at her. It took him a few seconds, but he uncurled his fingers and grabbed onto Emma’s pinky. She moved her pinky around and whispered reassuring words to him as he kept his fist balled up around her finger.

“See,” David started, “you just needed to relax.”

Her shoulders were still a little tense as she tried to keep the baby safely in her arms, but she didn’t feel the physical tension everyone could see. She only felt as light as a feather floating in the wind when she looked down at baby Neal’s cute little face and his big brown eyes.

“Wow,” Ruby cut in. “Even though you looked like you didn’t want anything to do with him before, you’re spellbound by the kid now.”

Emma’s smile held up as she looked from Neal to Ruby.

“I guess,” she said as she occasionally wriggled her pinky around and made his fist move with it as he held on.

Ruby’s gaze lowered from Emma’s eyes to baby Neal and she grinned before she looked at the blonde again.

“You think you’re horrible with them, but you love ‘em,” Ruby said with a knowing look and nudged her head at Emma’s hand.

The blonde kept her pinky in Neal’s clutch, but she’d started to mindlessly rub her index finger up and down his chest.

“Guess Mom wasn’t so bad with me at first after all,” Henry said and when Emma looked at him, he was smugly grinning at her.

Emma rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah,” she brushed him off.

“So, are you thinking of having any more,” Ruby asked.

“More what,” Emma asked, eyes wide as she looked up to regard the waitress. “Kids?”

Ruby nodded.

“No. No, no, no,” Emma said as she vehemently shook her head. “Henry’s more than enough for me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean,” Henry asked with a scrunched up and confused expression.

“Just that I’m happy having you. I don’t need another kid. Or a litter of them as wolf girl here might be suggesting.”

She looked up at Ruby as she used the term “wolf girl” and stared at her with a serious expression, though it was devoid of anger.

“Got it,” Ruby said as she laughed through her grin. “No more kids. How about Hook? What’s he think about that?”

“We don’t talk about that stuff.”

Henry contorted his face into a look of slight disgust before he said, “Shouldn’t you be talking about it though? Since you don’t talk about anything else, you should be really clear about that kind of thing before…you know.”

“Henry,” Emma loudly scolded and caught the attention of everyone in the front room of the diner. “Okay, living in New York was a bad idea because I _know_ I didn’t talk like that with you. Even when you were prying into my dating life with Walsh.”

“Is that really what’s important here,” Henry asked.

“I’m gonna go put your orders in,” Ruby said with a nervous but amused smile before she hurried off to the kitchen.

David coughed into his hand as he struggled to cover his laugh.

Snow looked between Emma and Henry with wide eyes, completely surprised by the subject of conversation.

“Are you getting smart with me, Kid?”

Roland looked from Emma to Henry and not-too-quietly sing-songed, “You’re in trouble.”

Robin stood from his table and went toward Roland.

“Alright, Roland. Time to come back to our table,” he said as he lifted the boy off Henry’s lap and carried him back to his seat.

“Daddy,” he whined.

Robin gave Emma a sympathetic look before he sat with Roland in his lap to keep him from running back to the other table.

She winced a little at his soft expression and felt guilty for making things uncomfortable for them even more so than they were for her and her family then looked back at Henry with a little more fire in her eyes than she might have had before Robin removed his son.

“I thought you liked Hook.”

“I do,” Henry responded.

“Then what’s up with the questions and the judgment? When Regina was dating you were okay with it. I think you were excited, actually.”

“Because it’s Mom.”

Emma frowned.

“What’s your point?”

“She’s…careful.”

Emma’s eyebrows jumped toward her hairline.

“And what does that make me? Reckless?”

“No, it’s just that…Mom hasn’t really been with anyone aside from Graham—and that was during the curse—and she’s not the one who got pregnant then, just like she didn’t get pregnant with me. So I wasn’t really worried that much was going on then, or at least it hadn’t gotten too far before you brought Marian back.”

“Are you saying you think I’m… _free_ like that?”

“Mom, I’m pretty sure you ran out of things to talk about with Hook six dates ago. There’s only one other thing you could be doing with your time together.”

A wounded look crossed over Emma’s face while Henry’s focus went to baby Neal. The baby started to get a little fussy so Emma looked down at him for a moment as she started to bounce him in her arms and pat his butt. When he started to settle down as Henry tickled his feet, Emma trained her eyes on the door with a sad expression that no one noticed when their food arrived. She was suddenly less interested in having her date that night.

She’d recently cancelled on Hook a few times, though, and she knew if she really wanted to be with him she needed to make more of an effort. But she wasn’t sure. The only time she’d felt sure about seeing him was the night he’d confessed he sold his precious Jolly Roger for her. Then everything with Regina had gone to hell when she realized she hadn’t saved just any woman from the Evil Queen in the Enchanted Forest of the past. After that, she had Elsa to deal with and Hook kept asking when they’d actually have a real date and Regina wouldn’t talk to her. It just wasn’t a good time. Even when, for the first time since she moved from Boston to Storybrooke, nothing was wrong and no one was in danger, she didn’t feel right when she thought about her upcoming dates with Hook.

It didn’t seem to matter, however, because since she found her family, Emma understood they were good people and good people didn’t reschedule a date two times in a row without good reason. So, as planned, Emma dropped Henry off at his grandparents and met Hook outside of the diner. They ordered a few snack foods to go and walked along the docks.

“I’m really glad you came out with me tonight,” Hook said with a smile that always looked a little more like a grin.

“Yeah, me too,” Emma automatically replied as she continued to look out at the sky and how it reflected on the water.

Hook stopped and grabbed Emma by the wrist. He gently tugged her around to face him and cocked his head to the side.

“Then why do I get the feeling you don’t want to be here?”

“No, that’s not…” Emma trailed off when Hook raised an eyebrow in challenge to her excuse before she could even finish coming up with it. “Look, I know it’s not fair for me to be like this and be so…distant. I’m sorry. It was another one of those days with Regina.”

“Regina, Regina, Regina,” he said, all in a long sigh. “It’s always something with her. And then you feel down and you cancel.”

“But I didn’t cancel tonight,” Emma pointed out, like it counted for something.

“We’ve been walking for over twenty minutes and all we’ve covered is that your parents are well, baby Neal is adorable, and Henry’s popular with the lads but not the ladies.”

“Then we’ve made good use of those twenty minutes.”

Hook shook his head. “We spent the first five minutes eating our snacks on the way here and then you answered my one question about your family within two minutes at most. It might have been better if you’d canceled.”

“Oh.”

Emma frowned.

“Is everything alright with you, Swan,” Hook quietly asked, a hint of concern in his voice.

Emma just stared at him with deer-like eyes, wide but acutely focused on one thing: the oncoming car. And like a car crash, Emma moved forward and the two of them slammed into each other like a rough, destructive collision.

It wasn’t right and it wasn’t pretty. It was sloppy and wild in a passionless kind of way. Emma could tell Hook was trying and that he at least felt something more than lust toward her, but she couldn’t give him anything as meaningful back to him as she allowed herself to be the type of person, the type of girlfriend, Henry assumed she was.

Hook spun them and pressed her against the railing as he gave and gave while they kissed. He conveyed so much and yet, it didn’t spark anything in her. It felt like it had when she’d kissed him every time before. A debt paid and one-sided feelings that made Emma feel wanted.

It wasn’t smart at all, but maybe that was all she needed. To be wanted. If she just kept giving in to him in ways that mattered more to Hook than she thought it would ever mean to her—

His good hand started to slide down her stomach between their bodies and she cringed. A small sound of protest fell past her lips just as she broke their kiss with a slight turn of her head and she pushed him away with the same hands that were latched onto the lapels of his coat.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a husky whisper as she walked past him and headed back toward her apartment.

When her back was to Hook, she wiped the back of her hand over her mouth and didn’t bother to look back at the pirate as he remained rooted to the spot Emma left him in with an utterly bewildered expression on his face.

* * *

The next morning wasn’t fantastic for Emma. Though she wasn’t ready to hold her head over a toilet and wait for the inevitable, she still felt her stomach roll as she thought about the previous night. Her date with Hook hadn’t ended as badly as it could have had she actually gone farther than making out, but it didn’t make her feel any better for having had his tongue and hers co-mingle.

With a to-go cup of coffee from Granny’s in her hand, sipping at it like it was Starbucks, she took a stroll around the town and somehow found herself at the benches by the docks. She took a seat on one and watched the calm water gently lap against the docks. She listened and let the chill whisper against her as the breeze passed her on its way toward the inner workings of the town. She lifted and tensed her shoulders as she huddled into herself then continued to sip her coffee until she finished half of it.

The solitude worked well, for about ten minutes. Before she guzzled down half of her coffee, she was already tired of the water and the calm, but mostly boring, scene. She sighed and slowly stood from the bench as she took one last look at the water before she turned back toward town. On her walk back to Main Street, her phone rang. Without checking the caller ID, she answered after two rings.

“Sheriff Swan. ...I’ll be right there.”

With a sigh, she ended the call and stomped her way over to Town Hall.

When Archie had called about flickers of light that resembled fire coming from Regina’s office, she knew to expect the brunette using magic. What she hadn’t expected, or had _known_ to expect, was an angered Mayor throwing fireballs at a pirate that laughed at all her attempts to barbeque him. She walked into Regina’s office at the exact moment Regina released another fireball and barely had enough time to dive and roll out of the way as it flew past Hook and right toward the door. The only thing out of her mouth was “shit” less than a second before she smacked into the floor and awkwardly rolled off her back and onto her feet.

“Miss Swan,” Regina barked. “Get your filthy pirate _out_ of my sight.”

Emma dusted off her clothes with a scrunched up expression before she properly acknowledged the other woman.

“What the _hell_ , Regina!”

Hook grinned when he looked between the two of them. He brought his good hand to his face and pressed his index finger to his lips while he watched their back and forth.

“If you don’t remove him from my office,” Regina continued and held her hand at her hip with her palm up.

A fireball started to form and a devious glint flashed in her eyes.

“Oh give it a rest, Regina,” Emma said with a tired slump of her shoulders.

The fireball remained in place.

“Seriously?”

“I want him as far away from me as possible,” Regina replied.

“What’s the problem,” Emma asked. “We’re in the mayor’s office and he’s a citizen. Last I checked, people are allowed to complain about town business to the mayor and you’re her, in case you forgot.”

“I think you know very well I don’t forget easily,” the woman icily responded.

Emma stopped talking. It wasn’t that she had intended to rock the boat with Regina because since the Marian incident that was the last thing she wanted to do. But Hook’s close proximity and almost being scorched by a fireball on arrival set the blonde on edge. Hearing Regina verbally spar with her only reminded the sheriff that she had done the one thing she’d promised she wouldn’t do until Regina had cooled off and found a way to handle not being able to be with Robin anymore, thanks to her.

“Except your _boyfriend_ didn’t come here to complain about town business, he came here to complain about _you_ ,” Regina fired back.

Emma’s mouth fell open and her eyes slid from Regina to Hook.

Hook’s grin faltered and he nervously shrugged. As soon as he opened his mouth to voice an explanation, Regina talked over him.

“I might care to know who you spend time with for Henry’s safety and overall well-being, but I do _not_ want to know _how_ you spend your time with them.”

Emma glared daggers at Hook.

Hook’s nervous smile immediately grew.

“So if you don’t mind, Miss Swan, please keep me out of your romantic life, or _lack_ of one apparently, and don’t allow the handless wonder within a ten foot radius of me. You might want to hold yourself to the same restrictions.”

Regina stood tall and confident behind her desk, her gaze set with steely determination. She kept her back straight and every muscle in her body appeared tense, but she still held herself together as regal as she’d ever been.

Emma took a deep breath and released it through her nose. Her chest heavily fell when she exhaled and within seconds her posture matched Regina’s in stiffness.

“Fine,” she quietly responded with a neutral expression. “Hook! Let’s go.”

Hook cleared his throat and looked back at Regina one final time before he turned and left the office. Emma left after him, but spared a much longer look at Regina before the door closed behind her.

Once the two of them were on the other side of Regina’s office, Hook replaced his nervous smile with an amused smirk. He chuckled and scratched his stubby beard with his fingertips.

“Well, that was–”

“Don’t,” Emma sternly interjected before the pirate could make a joke about what had happened. “Don’t say another word. It’s gonna be a while before our next date…if there’s one at all.”

“What? Swan.”

Emma shook her head as she made her way toward the stairs.

“Swan! Come on,” Hook said as she went after her. “Don’t listen to her. Regina’s only–”

Emma spun around and angrily closed a good amount of distance between them.

“Regina what? She didn’t do anything wrong. _You_ did.”

Hook frowned.

“Whatever issues you have with me about what happens between us doesn’t ever get back to Regina. Got it?”

“I’m sorry, love. It’s just that ever since Marian she’s been hard on you and then suddenly you stopped agreeing to see me. And when you do, your mind is elsewhere unless we’re–”

“Finish that sentence and you’ll lose your other hand,” Emma growled.

Hook huffed out a quiet sigh and looked down at the floor.

“Alright, Swan. I hear you.”

When he looked up at her again, his expression was apologetic but he didn’t utter words of the same sentiment. He shuffled past her and left Town Hall first without either one of them saying anything more to each other.

Emma sighed with defeat, her heavy exhale louder than expected in the quiet lobby. It was her final air of dismal before she left Town Hall as well.

* * *

_Queen of Nothing. What she wouldn’t give to feel like that again. As soon as possible. She may have hated being alone and neglected, may have even been vocal about it to Rumpelstiltskin, but she preferred to be alone and unbothered. Though it was miserable, it was the best part of her life as Queen, especially compared to the moments she dreaded. Moments like the current one._

_Leopold grunted above her in time with his choppy and unpleasant movements. She didn’t understand why he didn’t just beat her if he was so angry, at least that’s what it seemed like by the way he always took her to bed._ Demanded _her to bed, as it was her wifely duty, was more like it._

_As a coping method, a way to separate herself from the room, from the situation, she wondered if every wife married to royalty was subjected to this kind of pain. She wondered if Leopold ever acted this way with his dear Eva or if maybe he was just taking out his grief and frustrations of losing his beloved on his second wife._

_Though the King’s pleasure was shortly achieved every single time, he seemed to take twice as much pleasure at making it that much harder for Regina to enjoy even the tiniest bit of the experience. And the only part she ever enjoyed was when it was over. But the longer she stayed married to him, the longer he seemed to keep her under his thumb even though he had previously been content with only one orgasm. Once she had settled into the routine of only having to bear five minutes beneath the sweaty, overindulged in every way King, he seemed to favor making new routines that she wasn’t at all used to nor could she find a way to adjust._

_She remained trapped in his bed and felt, not for the first time, like she was being torn apart. Every time he pushed in, it chaffed. Every time he moved back before lurching forward again, it burned. When he finally decided he’d gotten what he wanted out of that night, he rolled over, covered himself, and dismissed her._

_She grimaced and fought back tears with every step she took as she slowly walked back to her own bed chamber, a painful throb between her legs. When she attempted to sit on the edge of the bed, she hissed and choked back a sob before she curled up on her side and avoided applying any pressure to the battered space between her thighs._

Regina woke up with a gasp and a thin layer of sweat that coated her body. It was the least graceful she had ever been with the way she scrambled around in the bed and kicked at the sheets that suffocated her when they refused to disentangle from her. She let out bursts of small but emotion-filled screams borne of terror and hurt and panic. She flailed around and landed a few stray punches against her pillows before she successfully freed herself from the twisted bed sheets. Her fingers caught on a pillow case during one of her stray and somewhat accidental punches and the pillow she had once rested her head on tumbled to the floor as she hung her legs over the side of the bed. An unexpected thump accompanied it when the pillow hit the carpet and as soon as Regina could breathe without flashing back to her nightmare, which at one time had been her horrific reality, she questioningly looked down at the floor. Near the edge of the bed she saw a partially used white candle.

She bent over and brought the candle to eyelevel for closer inspection. Nothing was inscribed on it and there was no indication as to what its use could be, but Regina knew where she kept her candles and under her pillow was not even close. Still a little disturbed by the nightmare, she gulped but managed to tightly grip the candle with one hand and with determination that never typically paired up with one of panic. She fled her room and headed down to the study to consult her books and hadn’t bothered to check the time before she busied herself with research. The time, however, hadn’t mattered since she hadn’t gotten any more sleep that night because of her reading and what she feared she would have to relive if she closed her eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

Though it was quiet again in Storybrooke and Emma had formed a routine, each morning wasn’t the same. It didn’t start the same, it didn’t feel the same. But as Emma blew on her morning coffee before she slowly turned from the counter and attempted to take a sip, she didn’t believe any of those statements because Regina stood just inside the doorway. The difference between seeing Regina the previous morning and this morning was that today Regina looked off. The scene of Emma and Regina in the diner for breakfast may have been similar, but something had changed in Regina and apparently overnight.

There were bags under her eyes and her skin looked paler than Emma could ever remember seeing it. She seemed tense in a way she hadn’t the day before when Emma had last seen her in the office. She visibly swallowed and made her way to the counter without making eye contact with anyone, including Emma as the younger woman slowly moved from the counter to a nearby table.

Emma kept her eyes locked on the brunette as she stuttered out an order to Ruby with a voice as shaky as her hands. She looked at Regina curiously and wondered if the other woman had already helped herself to coffee at home before she came to the diner, but that wouldn’t explain the lack of color to her once beautifully olive skin or the desperate worry in her widened eyes.

While Regina sat in one of the many available stools at the counter and waited for her food, Emma considered checking in with the other woman. It didn’t matter that they hardly spoke and it didn’t matter that Regina was still less than pleased with her. The brunette was Henry’s mother and Emma wasn’t the angry one out of the two of them. She was frustrated and let that out every once in a while, but she wasn’t the one that told Regina to keep things between them strictly about Henry.

Regina might not have wanted to be there for Emma, but Emma wanted to be there for Regina. She was a good person that tended to look out for those that didn’t threaten her family, at least those that hadn’t threatened her family that week, and more than that, she actually cared about Regina. The only reason that made any sense to her was that she cared about the other woman because of Henry, but she had also accepted—long ago—that she also had respect for Regina. The respect used to be mutual, but Emma doubted Regina had much respect for a woman who ripped away her new chance at love.

Emma stood up and left her steaming coffee on the table. She took a deep breath and held it for a moment before she let it out in harsh exhale then took a couple of steps toward Regina. She was about to take a third step when Ruby came out with her order and set her plate and drink down on the counter with an almost non-existent and conflicted smile. It was like Ruby had noticed the same changes in Regina that she had and wanted to smile to comfort the Mayor, but was unsure if that was what she needed. Plus, the discomfort of the fact that Regina burned holes in the people she stared down and the only two people not on the receiving end of those stares lately were Elsa and Tinker Bell.

Ruby gave up with the half-smile as soon as she’d curled her lips to display it and turned to leave Regina to her meal. Emma almost took that third step forward again, but Ruby called out to her with a little urgency and the blonde deflated. Before she turned her attention to the waitress, however, Regina’s focus went from her plate to Emma in what felt like the blink of an eye. She gulped and assumed the deer-in-headlights stance and expression under Regina’s gaze, which hadn’t felt like the usual scrutiny imposed on her whenever they made eye contact.

Regina maintained eye contact for a moment and momentarily looked less frightened, but there still wasn’t any amusement or even a playful sneer like there might have been before Emma accidentally and unwittingly screwed with Regina’s feelings. It all but broke Emma’s heart to see how quickly she had shattered the part of their chemistry, their connection, that made it easy to joke with and jab at each other. It may not have always been pretty or nice between them, but the snarky comments and the familiarity made everything feel right. In a world full of constantly appearing and mostly troublesome fairy tale characters, teasing and insulting each other had a sort of calming effect on the blonde.

And now that that was gone, now that it had stopped, her world felt off-balance. _She_ felt off-balance.

Ruby once again caught Emma’s attention and just before she turned to the waitress she saw Regina swallow and look away, back to her food. She almost looked like she wanted to turn back to Emma, at least to avoid whatever was going on inside her head.

“So, last night was the final night of the full moon for the month,” Ruby started as she came to stand beside Emma. “I went for a run, like I usually do, and…I saw something.”

Emma’s eyes widened.

“Uh, really,” Emma asked as she tried to discreetly, casually, usher Ruby away from the counter. She really hoped Ruby had seen something other than the terrible date she’d had with Hook. She didn’t want to talk about it and she definitely didn’t want people to know how lame her love life was, especially because people tended to take Hook’s side for some reason. Well, everyone except for Henry.

“Yep,” Ruby replied as they both slid into chairs at a table near one of the front windows. “And I’m not sure what to make of it.”

“Right. Well,” Emma awkwardly responded. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“I wouldn’t be telling you if it wasn’t a possible cause for concern,” Ruby said as she gestured with loose hands and flicking wrists.

“Concern?”

Emma scrunched up her face out of worry and confusion.

“Yeah, I was in the woods kind of by the docks and it seemed like what I saw was worth some attention.”

Panic set in. It wasn’t the same kind of panic caused by the arrival of a new villain, but she definitely didn’t like where the conversation seemed to be going.

“Are you ever going to tell me what you saw or are you just going to keep alluding to this ‘possible cause for concern’,” she tried to joke.

Ruby chuckled and to ease her building tension, Emma chuckled with her.

“I was getting there,” Ruby explained with a wide smile that flashed pearly white teeth. “As I was trying to say…I was in the woods on my run and I almost tripped over these candles.”

“Candles?”

Emma and Ruby whipped their heads to the side and noticed Regina frozen on her way to the door with her food in a carryout bag, brown eyes focused on the two of them.

Ruby frowned.

“Yeah, candles. There were maybe three of them in a pile together. Pretty used by the stubs leftover and severely burned wicks. What’s it to you?”

“What _kind_ of candles,” Regina sidestepped the question.

“Uh, _candles_. Nothing too special about them,” Ruby shrugged.

“Color?”

“Seriously,” Ruby questioned. “I don’t know. White?”

Regina’s eyebrows shot up toward her hairline and she paled further, which Emma hadn’t thought possible but apparently it was.

“Might have been darker colors there too,” Ruby added and spoke to both Emma and Regina with a slightly suspicious and definitely questioning expression on her face, “but I was in wolf’s form. I was a little colorblind at the time.”

Regina still looked perplexed and far from okay, her eyes trained blankly on their table and not on the people she was talking to.

“Does that…mean something to you,” Emma carefully asked.

Regina, mouth partially open, looked from the tabletop to Emma.

“I…I have to go,” Regina said as she shuffled the rest of the way to the door and left the diner.

“I understand she’s still dealing with the whole Robin thing, but…what is her deal? She seems…”

“Off,” Emma finished for her and nodded as she supplied the word.

“Yeah,” Ruby agreed and nodded as well. “And she didn’t even stick around for the best part.”

Emma cocked her head to one side.

“I also saw you and Hook,” Ruby grinned.

“Oh. Yeah, that’s less intriguing than the candle thing.”

Ruby rolled her eyes with a smile.

“Mm, I don’t think so. Candles are just candles unless Regina decides to tell us they mean something bad. You _bailing_ on your boyfriend just before things got good is way more interesting.”

Emma sighed. Another long day and another conversation about Hook. The more time she spent in the post-Marian world of Storybrooke, the more she started to wish for her own selfish reasons that she hadn’t brought Robin’s wife back.

* * *

Tired, light brown eyes shadowed by dark circles blearily stared down at paperwork he thought he wouldn’t have to deal with, but there David sat; at his desk with blurry vision caused by sleep deprivation and a paper cup filled with station-made coffee beside him. He took a long sip from his cup and squinted at the file on his desk when he pulled the coffee away from his mouth.

“You look like hell,” a familiar accent traveled across the room.

David looked up from his work and spotted Hook in the entryway with a smirk on his face. The smirk faded after a few steps into the work room.

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you’re up all night with a baby and still working full time to help make sure no one else threatens the town. Although, it’d be much easier if Emma, now that she’s sheriff again because raising little Neal is a full-time job in itself, would take the brunt of the paperwork for me.”

“Speaking of Emma,” Hook started as he slowly took the seat on the other side of David’s desk. “Lately I can’t get through to her. One minute I think she’s going to finally be the woman that trusted me with her son while Zelena was a problem, but then she flees in the next minute like she remembers everything else matters more than her trying to be happy.”

David grunted and dropped his pen onto the paperwork before he gave Hook his full attention.

“Let me guess, she’s still worried about Regina,” he said it as more of a statement and it sounded flat, almost like he was disinterested and not at all surprised.

“Yes, but…now I’m not so sure that’s the only thing pulling her away from me.”

David furrowed his brows as he considered the new information.

“Well, I don’t see much of her anymore since she and Henry moved out. I’m not sure what’s going on with her, but if my short conversations with her are anything to go by I’d say she’s put up some defenses again.”

“You think she’s closed off,” Hook asked.

David shrugged.

“Seems like it. I think she’s been about the same since Zelena. You know, since she was convinced it’d be best if she took Henry back to New York with her.”

“But she got over that,” Hook said with a confused expression. “There was a moment between us. I saw it, I _felt_ it.”

“Maybe that’s all it was. A moment.”

Hook frowned.

“It was right before everything with Marian blew up in her face, right?”

“Aye. It was,” Hook somberly confirmed.

“Then it could have been a moment when everything felt okay so she let go of whatever was holding her back. That moment lasted up until Regina—”

Hook cut David off with a sigh and nodded.

“It always leads back to Regina, doesn’t it,” the pirate said.

“Well, she _is_ Henry’s other mother. She’ll always matter and she’ll always be a concern because of him. If something’s wrong with her, we _all_ have to deal with it.”

“Because it’s what Emma wants,” Hook surmised.

“Henry too,” David amended for him. “It used to be that Henry needed to remind us what we all refused to acknowledge. And that is that Regina is family. We don’t need reminding now. We know. _That’s_ why Emma makes it a priority.”

“Because she’s spent long enough hearing the lad remind you all why Regina matters? Because she already knows if she doesn’t help Regina, Henry will be upset.”

“Right,” David agreed.

“That’s all then? You don’t think there’s another reason she’s avoiding me? Even when she’s with me?”

David let out a heavy sound of exasperation in the form of a noisy sigh and rubbed a hand back and forth through his messy, uncut hair.

“Emma’s gonna do what she’s gonna do. As much as I wish I understood my daughter, I honestly _don’t_ know why she would be pulling away all of a sudden. My only advice would be to let her come to you, give her some space. If she’s anything like Snow, and I’m sure she is, she doesn’t like being crowded. Sometimes you’ve got to let her do what she’s gonna do and at some point, she might let you in. Other than that, I really can’t help you.”

“Right then,” Hook said, defeated. “Thanks for the suggestion, mate.”

Hook stood as David muttered, “Yeah” and when the prince stood to walk him out, someone else walked in.

Emma immediately stopped in the entryway when she saw David and Hook together and her mouth opened and closed a few times, like a fish out of water, in her shock.

“Hook,” she managed to say as she looked between the two men. “What are you doing here?”

“Just catching up, love,” Hook said with a hint of a smile. “Haven’t really had a chance to talk with the beloved prince since we faced Zelena.”

“How close _are_ you two,” Emma angrily asked, though she didn’t raise her voice.

“We’re hardly close,” David answered. “We were just talking.”

“About how tired the man is, in fact,” Hook added and looked to David before his eyes locked onto Emma’s again. “Between the little one, doing…whatever it is you two do here, and handling everything else non-magic or work related that he does, he doesn’t get much rest.”

Emma frowned and looked at David with concern.

“Really,” she asked.

“I’ll…leave you both to it,” Hook said with a bigger, though noticeably forced, smile and excused himself from the station.

Emma and David watched Hook turn the corner and leave before they both returned their attention to each other.

“Do you need time off,” Emma asked as she walked further into the room and went straight to her father. “There’s really not much going on. Things have been pretty quiet after we figured out Elsa’s thankfully not one of the bad guys.”

“But I don’t want to leave you to run the station by yourself,” David gently argued.

“It’s not that big a responsibility. I told you, there’s nothing going on in Storybrooke to worry about. Well, unless whatever Regina’s spooked about actually turns out to be something.”

“Wait, Regina’s _spooked_?”

“Uh, yeah. She came into the diner looking…” Emma gave David a once-over, “looking not much better than you, actually. And then Ruby was talking about candles and Regina practically ran out of Granny’s.”

“All the more reason for me to be here to help you.”

“With what? Ruby’s not exactly sure what seeing the candles means and Regina hasn’t been forthcoming about what it might mean to her.”

“Still, whatever it is could be dangerous. Regina doesn’t ‘spook’ easily.”

“I know. Just…take a few days off and let me worry about the potential danger. Okay?”

David sighed and sat on the edge of his desk.

“Why must you and your mother always make things difficult for me?”

Emma smiled.

“Don’t blame us. _You’re_ the one who married her and I’m only the product of that union. Definitely not our fault you chose us.”

David chuckled.

“You’re right about that,” he said and pulled her into a hug.

She briefly, and a little stiffly, hugged him back then pulled away. She still wasn’t used to acts of affection that resulted from something like a shared opinion or other small moments that had nothing to do with death or oncoming curses.

“Look, if you think it’s that big a deal I have some back up, I’ll see if I can get Regina to open up about the candles and—”

“You really think Regina’s gonna tell you anything?”

Emma shrugged.

“If something _is_ going on, Henry’s safety might be compromised. That’s the magic word that could get her to talk.”

David smirked.

“What,” she asked.

“Nothing. Just feeling a little fatherly pride right now.”

Emma laughed.

“For using Henry as a way to get Regina to talk to me?”

“For not giving up.”

Emma adopted a sheepish look and David beamed at her as he imagined it’s what she must have looked like when she was younger.

“I love you, Kiddo,” he said as he stood then placed a kiss on the top of her head.

Emma groaned and scrunched up her face in slight displeasure as she started to squirm away.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said as she took a couple steps away from him. “Just leave the sheriff-ing to me and enjoy several great naps and some family time.”

“Okay, but the second you need real back up you call me. Got it?”

“And you’ve now moved on from proud to overprotective Dad in less than five minutes.”

“Alright,” he lightly laughed. “I can take a hint. I’ll be at the apartment with your mother and brother.”

Emma smiled and gave a curt nod as she watched him head for the door.

“See you later,” he threw over his shoulder with a soft expression and gleaming eyes.

“Bye,” she waved at him on his way out.

Once she was alone at the station, she walked around David’s desk and looked down at what he’d been working on. She glanced over it for a few seconds before she grabbed the file and took it to her desk inside her incredibly small office. She left the door open, took her seat and got to work.

* * *

On her lunch break, Emma skipped the phone call and went straight to Regina’s office. Happily married Princess Anna of Arendale sat behind a desk in the lobby. Since Regina had helped Elsa find her, the woman had been grateful and offered to fill the previously empty position of Mayor’s Assistant.

Anna flashed Emma a nervous smile and stood up, but remained at her desk as she timidly spoke up to stop the sheriff.

“Sheriff Swan?”

Emma turned to the younger woman and saw a nervous smile that looked more like an apologetic grimace.

“Regina’s asked that I not let you in,” Anna said to her with her hands balled into fists in front of her chest, kind of childlike.

“Don’t let them in, don’t let them see, huh,” Emma teased with a smirk.

Anna just looked confused and cocked her head to one side.

Emma chuckled and shook her head. “Never mind.”

She ignored Anna’s previous statements about Regina practically banning her from the office and continued toward the door.

“Sheriff,” Anna pointlessly called out just as Emma pulled open Regina’s door.

“Hello, your Majesty,” Emma casually greeted as she walked into the office and closed the door.

“Miss Swan,” Regina responded with annoyance, her eyes slowly pulled from her paperwork to the blonde by the door. “Not only are you disrespecting me by being here, but you’re disrespecting Anna by disregarding her warning that you _stay away_ from me.”

Emma rolled her eyes.

“You can lecture me about ruining your day with my presence or you can get rid of me faster by answering my questions.”

“Unless it has to do with Henry—”

“The look on your face at the diner earlier gives me reason enough to think this could affect him,” Emma argued.

Regina’s expression went from displeased to afraid in six seconds. That fear had mixed with nervousness and discomfort just as quickly and Emma no longer saw the Regina she knew. She saw a much younger and unsure version of the brunette.

“See? That look. Right there,” Emma said with a finger pointed at the other woman.

Regina blinked and neutralized her features to rid herself of their revealing nature. She released her pen and let it fall onto her desk as she set her attention solely on Emma.

“I don’t know anything,” Regina claimed.

“Then why did you freak out,” Emma skeptically asked.

“Your superpower must not be working properly,” Regina spat. “I’m telling the truth.”

“No,” Emma continued to argue. “You know something. Whether or not you know what any of the damn candles _mean_ , you knew about them when Ruby brought them up.”

Regina clenched and unclenched her fists then pushed away from her desk and stood. She walked around to the front of her desk and anchored herself with a hand pressed to the back of the nearest visitor’s chair.

“You’re right,” the brunette finally agreed. “I did know about the candles, but I don’t know who’s using them or why.”

“How did you know about them in the first place?”

Regina met Emma’s gaze and gulped before she averted her eyes. She didn’t look fearful like she had in the diner, but it was obvious she didn’t want to talk about it.

“Regina,” Emma gently prodded.

The older woman sighed and her posture slumped a bit in the process.

“I found one under my pillow this morning,” Regina reluctantly confessed.

Emma’s eyes widened in response.

“What? Your pill—Is this…a magic thing?”

“I believe so, yes,” Regina answered.

“So…what could the candles be used for?”

“Many things. I tried to find something in my books about them, but the possibilities are endless.”

“Okay, something’s clearly going on here. There’s either a new villain in town or someone who’s been here a while is finally making themselves known. Do you think whatever this person is trying to accomplish with the candles is a bad thing?”

“Given what happened before I found the candle I’d say that’s an accurate assumption,” Regina deadpanned.

Emma furrowed her brows and asked, “What happened?”

She watched all of Regina’s walls shoot back into place and immediately she understood their conversation was over.

“Unless Henry finds any candles or sees anyone suspicious hanging around him, I think it’s safe to say he’s not in danger.”

“Maybe not,” Emma slowly said. “But _you_ might be.”

Regina scoffed.

“Oh, _now_ you’re concerned about me,” she snapped. “I think it’s a little late for you to finally consider how certain things might affect me.”

Emma shifted her weight from one leg to the other and sighed as she briefly directed her attention to the ceiling, not quite an eye-roll. When she focused again on Regina, brown eyes sharply stared back at her and the other woman looked determined to get rid of her.

“It’s time for you to leave,” Regina growled. “If something else should happen before Henry comes to stay with me this weekend, I’ll sacrifice overnight stays and keep visitation limited to anytime before dusk, with the exception of dinner, for his safety. And _that_ concludes any business you have with me so you are excused…Sheriff.”

The title caused Emma to change from frustrated to crestfallen. It was like she was back at the diner and Regina was telling her, “You’re just like your mother.” She was being shut out yet again and her expression gave away the hurt she felt because of it.

It had always been one step forward and two steps back with them and apparently that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

Emma gave a short nod of understanding and turned to the door like a wounded puppy. She left with more information than she’d had to go off of than before, but she also left with a sadness she didn’t quite understand.

* * *

It was at the station when she returned from her only partially helpful lunch break that she was surprised upon entry for the second time that day. Inside, she found Robin Hood throwing darts with amazing accuracy against her abused, and usually missed due to her poor skills, dartboard.

“Ah, Emma,” Robin smiled at her after he landed a shot in the bullseye just as she walked in. “Glad you’re back. I was hoping to have a word with you.”

Emma questioningly stared at Robin.

“I wasn’t aware there was something to talk about,” she said, a little confused.

“Nothing terrible,” he reassured with a bigger smile. “I just wanted to know if we could schedule a time for Roland and Henry to play together. And possibly invite you and him to a housewarming dinner?”

He chuckled through his awkwardness and looked nervous as he broached the subject. She didn’t know why her potential reaction would make him uneasy, but she supposed it might have to do with the completely human fear of rejection—which is probably why she felt crushed leaving Regina’s office.

“Roland’s always welcome to spend time with Henry. How many people are you expecting for the dinner?”

“Just your parents and hopefully you and Henry. I’m afraid we aren’t very close with anyone else in town.”

“Well, wouldn’t that be the point of having a dinner or maybe even a party? Housewarmings are usually a time to get to know the neighbors, collect a few bottles of wine and whatever food dish they bring as gifts and mingle.”

“I suppose that might be a better way to go about things,” he said with a thoughtful expression as he continued to think it over.

“As for Henry and I showing up, I’ll need to know when the dinner is. If it falls on a night Regina has Henry…”

“Then you’ll either have to ask if he can join or it’ll just be you attending. I understand,” he curtly nodded and looked down at the station floor. “Right. Well, it’ll be next weekend. If you need to check with Regina—”

Emma shook her head.

“He’ll be back with me then. Shouldn’t be a problem,” she replied.

“Good,” he smiled again and Emma fought the urge to squirm and nervously shift in front of him. “Next Saturday at seven then?”

Emma gave a quick nod with pursed lips and stuffed her hands in her back pockets out of nervous habit. It wasn’t that she was nervous, though. She just felt a little uncomfortable with the thought of having dinner with the root of her problem with Regina. It didn’t seem right, or fair for that matter.

“Alright. I’ll leave you to your work,” he said and started toward the door.

Emma furrowed a brow and thought about what he’d said as she slowly spun on her heel to turn to him while he made his way out of the room.

“Hey, now that you mention work,” she said and caused Robin to turn back to her to give her his full attention. “What are you doing to keep yourself busy during the day?”

“Usually hunting game with my Men. Some of it we eat and some of it we hunt for fun. It’s something to do. Why?”

“Would you and some of the Merry Men be interested in being part-time deputies?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’d be working night shifts and you’d be keeping an eye out on any suspicious activity in the park and woods. You can do the rounds in pairs and alternate who works every other night.”

“That sounds…like something I’ll have to talk over with my Men, but I know if you need me I’ll be willing to take on the job.”

“Great. Uh, see if you can get one of them to go with you tonight? I think there might be something happening in the woods and I want to start looking into it as soon as possible.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “I’m sure Little John wouldn’t mind coming along. Shall I report back to you tomorrow at the start of your shift?”

“Actually, you can have my cell number and just let me know if you see anything worth immediate attention,” she said as she scribbled out her number on the nearest sticky note. “If everything’s quiet and there’s nothing to report, just let me know when you come in for your shift at six. I think doing one or two sweeps from then until midnight is a decent amount of time to be on the lookout right now.”

She handed him the business card and he nodded in comprehension.

“And I’ll start at six every night? The Men, too?”

“Yes. You guys can work out whatever schedule you want as to who comes in on what nights. Just let me know by your shift tomorrow who’s gonna be on the payroll.”

Emma cringed as she reminded herself of the paperwork involved with the payroll. It meant including their salary in the budget and expenditures that would go to Regina’s office and that would probably incur questions about how many people she had recently employed. That would then lead to questions about how she managed to hire so many people in such a short amount of time, or—because Regina’s smart enough to figure it out without playing twenty questions—she’d know right away that Emma had asked Robin and the Merry Men to work at the station with her. She really didn’t look forward to that conversation, mostly because it would be an argument and not an actual discussion.

“Something wrong,” Robin asked, which brought Emma out of her thoughts to remember that she wasn’t alone in the station.

“Yeah—I mean, no. No, nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking about the paperwork I’ll have to fill out once we know how many of the guys will agree to work.”

“Ah. I imagine that won’t be a good time.”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and resumed his walk toward the exit.

“Yeah,” she muttered more to herself than in response to him.

She turned away from him and faced the room. She took stock of the three empty desks positioned between the only two cells the station had and the cramped space that was her office. It wasn’t very lively at the time, but that was good. She hated small and crowded places. Asking Robin and his band of thieves to join the tiny police force of Storybrooke, however? She had a feeling that would make things a little livelier and if there _was_ a threat—even if it was only posed against Regina—that would mean an investigation and nights spent worrying about the threat’s next move. Her days would, no doubt, be even longer than they already were if that happened.

* * *

Crossbow in hand, Robin walked along the edges of the woods in the later hours of the evening. It was a little after eleven and Little John had lingered several feet behind him with a weapon of his own to more effectively do a sweep of the sleepy town. In case something happened after Robin had moved past a certain area, Little John was there to catch whatever or whoever in the act and he wasn’t too far from Robin in case one of them needed assistance.

The moon was bright, but no longer full, through the trees and the thin autumn fog that covered the higher altitudes of Storybrooke. The wind rarely howled with the lack of breeze that night. The weather was, interestingly enough, muggy and sweat slid down the back of Robin’s neck and beaded on his forehead. He swiped the back of his hand across his forehead and the back of his wrist skimmed the tops of his brow. The action didn’t provide much relief, but the thief was used to unpleasant weather conditions. The Enchanted Forest was a big place and with royalty and their loyal guards to hide from in the thick of the brush, it wasn’t an easy life he and the Men lived as they traveled from kingdom to kingdom to help the poor villages and their desperate and gracious people.

It had been hours of uneventful nothingness between the station, the park, and the trail they’d walked up until the area of the woods they currently passed. Robin took what he was doing seriously, but as he wandered through the quiet town he wondered what exactly would be happening in it that required extra help.

Just as thoughts like that came to mind, he saw a flickering light not too far beyond the tree line in the woods. He stared at it through squinted eyes with a curious look on his face. He continued to walk along the edge of the woods were grass and twigs met asphalt, but kept his focus on the light. As his line of sight cleared after passing a few of the trees that blocked his view of the area the light came from, the flickering appeared through a window in alternating glows of oranges, reds, and golden yellows. Smoke billowed out from a chimney and darkened a small range of the overhead fog within and above the large and healthy trees all around the woods. He had spent a year and four months in Storybrooke, but that hadn’t been long enough to know whether or not someone actually lived in a cabin in the woods. He wasn’t even sure the fire inside meant someone lived there. Whoever was in the cabin could have very well been a couple spending a night in an intimate setting to rekindle the flame of their relationship. It could have been a sweet end to a lovely first date or it could have been a couple of teens who had run off to spend the night there just for the hell of it.

He filed away the apparent occupancy in the cabin, but kept his crossbow at his side and his phone tucked away in his pocket. He wasn’t sure seeing a shadow dancing along the wall on occasion inside a cabin was anything urgent. Emma hadn’t even seemed too worried about what might be out there when she gave him the assignment so he figured whatever it was could wait. If anything really was going on there, there was a chance Little John might see more cause for alarm as he passed.

Robin continued on his way in the loop around town that would bring both of them back to the station for the end of their shift. In the six hours they had walked through the less populated areas of town, all they had seen was a fire going in the cabin. When they’d reached the station, they agreed they both had seen the fire and nothing else so they called it a night and parted ways.

* * *

He held a candle in each hand at an angle into the fire to light the wick. Once a flame caught on each one, he repeated the action with three other candles and formed a circle with them on the cabin floor. Though there were no lines drawn with herbs or any kind of writing utensil, each candle served as a point in a pentagram.

The smell of wormwood and Solomon’s seal filled the room from the coffee table that was set up like an altar. Only the sound of popping and crackling fire warded off silence and the fire in the fireplace as well as on the candle wicks were the only source of light throughout the cabin. The same picture brought into Regina’s home for a simple spell three nights prior sat against one of the candles lit by the cabin’s fire. The image of a royal man with curly gray hair that didn’t reach the top of his head, a bald spot there that was covered by the strategic use of a crown, was clear as it faced outward from the candle.

He settled onto the floor in front of the circle of candles, which put him an equal distance from the coffee table and fireplace. He took a deep breath and knelt before the candles then waited until less than a minute remained before the stroke of midnight to add his voice to the sounds within the confined area.

“Hecate, I call to you and ask a favor,” his deep voice broke through the air around him with a subtle Spanish accent. “I ask you to bring forth a lost and dark spirit. He is noble in his right to be given a chance to return to this plane of existence and to be reunited with his proper body. Hecate, I ask you to return King Leopold White.”

Wind whirled around the room and the candles’ flames rose higher. The fire in the fireplace picked up as well and slowly, it arced and burned toward the center inside the circle of candles. Every bit of fire in the room then swirled together inside the circle and rose higher still to form a high-walled ring of fire. The wind only stopped when the fire within the circle died down and revealed a man in its wake.

Before him, the man in the picture propped against one of the nearest of the candles stood with the same shocked expression he’d last made with his face during his last moment alive. His veins appeared black from the viper’s venom that killed him for only a moment before it faded and his skin looked as unmarred as it had been before he was bitten. His shock wore off with the fading effects of the venom and he inspected his new surroundings, curious but not entirely confused. After several seconds, once everything within the cabin was as calm as it had been before the summoning, his eyes found the reason for his return.

“I know you,” he said with a looked of partly surprised recognition.

“My King,” the man with the almost undetectable accent said with a polite and necessary bow of his head before he raised it to give the royal his attention again. “Welcome to Storybrooke.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there's chapter 2! Let me know what you think so far of this mystery and thanks for reading. I hope you'll stick with me through this journey that will definitely be leading to not only answers about "the big bad" but also Swan Queen! Like I said in the first chapter, it will be a slow burn, but don't worry. There will be plenty of Emma and Regina moments throughout. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Mentions of rape in the beginning of the chapter. It's marked in italics so skip ahead if it bothers you.

_Springs folded and creaked steadily like the beat of a metronome. With every creak, she squeezed her eyes shut and refused to touch him or the sheets even though she desperately wanted,_ needed _, to claw at things to help her through the pain. She needed to avoid giving him any impression that she liked what he did and she understood clutching the sheets or the other person could occasionally be seen as a sign of passion. She absolutely did not feel that with him. Her happiness, her innocence, her love of life, and her passion had died with Daniel._

_Thankfully, the torture ended early that night and she was dismissed in a hurry. The next day, however, was less than pleasant. Nothing was ever pleasant for Regina around the palace, but sometimes things were more peaceful because she was alone. As much as she hated the solitude, she was also grateful when she thought about the alternative: sex with the King—and just the King was enough to make her vomit let alone sex with him—and an insistent little girl who was the reason she was trapped in the palace in the first place._

_She was going to be alone again for a week starting the next morning, but she apparently couldn’t celebrate the White’s soon approaching absence by curling up with a book and keeping away from father and daughter. The day was filled with boring plans that required her to be worn on the King’s arm like the practical trophy wife she was married off to be. He treated her like his possession; and not his favorite or most precious possession—that was Snow—and she wasn’t treated much like a possession at all. She definitely wasn’t treated as needlessly as Regina either._

_His grip was tight as he pulled her around everywhere and later she saw just how strong his grip had been when she uncovered the bruises on her arm before bed. But she didn’t get to bed as intended that night. She’d gotten comfortable on her own mattress for all of three minutes before her presence was requested in the King’s chamber._

_So she made her way to his chamber as necessary and assumed he just wanted an additional night to use her body for his pleasure before he left for the week. It ended up being more. Unfortunately for her, Leopold wanted to discuss her past and future behavior. He wasn’t pleased by how much he had to direct her around the grounds while they gave visiting royals a tour of the castle. She thought that was a lie considering how little he cared that he’d marked her with his bare hands in a steel grip. Either way, he wasn’t satisfied and she was forced to bear the consequences anyway. Thankfully, the only consequence for her “wrongful” behavior was a lecture. Granted, the lecture involved heavy and hurtful insults that left her feeling emotionally wounded, but at least she could claim he hadn’t_ physically _wounded her._

_That was until he ended his berating and commanded her to do more than lie on her back beneath him. That night, as a “temporary going away present”, she learned about several depraved and degrading sex acts in order to sate his desire long enough to last him the weeklong trip. She tried not to gag or cry while she serviced him until her knees started to ache and redden from her prolonged position on the floor. She dutifully allowed him to hold her down while she laid flat on her stomach while he forced himself into her from behind, and she was actually appreciative that he didn’t violate any unusual parts of her—mainly, she was appreciative he wasn’t interested in anal. She hated that she felt appreciative for any of the things he performed behind closed doors, but she had to remind herself that her situation could be worse._

_By the time he was done with her, she felt completely exposed and utterly used. Once she was back in her own room and went to take a long bath in a futile attempt to rid herself of the filth she felt covered in and full of, she sent her handmaiden away by frantically waving her hands and snapping at the woman undeserving of her anger. She didn’t want to be touched by anyone and she refused to even strip in front of the woman who had seen her entirely bare several times before because that night had been all too much. So much so, in fact, that when she was finally alone and she had removed her sleepwear, she noticed a thin coat of sticky, red patches on the upper part of her inner thighs. He’d used enough brute force to make her bleed and knew that because her menstrual cycle wasn’t supposed to occur for the next few weeks._

_Getting into the bath, she realized she was already sore from the night’s torture. She knew then that the next morning would be tough, tougher than most of the mornings she’d woken up with bile in her throat and aches and pains throughout her body. He’d done more to her that night than he had in the last three months and as she submerged most of her body in the nearly boiling hot water, she cried quietly for a long time. She’d cried to the point of hurting her chest and straining her throat on top of the other agony she was left to suffer through because of the King._

_She’d never even gotten a chance to know what good sex, or at least_ consensual _sex, was like and she didn’t know any other reason for having sex aside from establishing who had the power or simply to selfishly satisfy one person’s needs with sheer disregard for the other person’s. Sex, in her mind, was a duty that kept her miserable because sex wasn’t for her. It was for_ him _._

She woke up less dramatically that night, but there were already tears on her face by the time she opened her eyes. She wanted to scream, angrily and in an attempt to finally let out her feelings about her beyond awful past that hadn’t revolved around a plan for revenge against Snow White. It was supposed to be therapeutic, but the scream never came because when she sat up to release her emotions she saw something near the foot of her bed. It was a figure, a shadow. The shape looked familiar and a violent shiver shot down her spine at the fear of who might be in her bedroom.

The figure’s identity was revealed in no time as it took a slow step forward and a face was lit by the moonlight that streamed through the thin curtains that covered her window. Her eyes widened in disbelief and appropriate, justified, fear.

“No,” she breathed out barely louder than a whisper.

He still wore his crown and the same clothes he was buried in. There was no mistaking it. King Leopold White stood in her bedroom with his eyes sharply and solely focused on her.

Her breathing sped up and she curled her fingers in a tight grip around her bed sheets as she refused to take her eyes off of him, panic written all over her face. She wanted to flee the room, but if he was real and actually standing right in front of her she didn’t want him to touch her at all. If she ran, there was a possibility that he would try to stop her and that meant risking him reaching out to do just that.

She didn’t have to think about an exit strategy, however, because he moved again. He walked to his left and she instantly shuffled to the side of the bed furthest from him. She didn’t know where he was headed, but she wasn’t going to allow him to get anywhere near her, especially after the dream—the horrific _memory_ —she had just woken up from.

Apparently, the universe was finally on her side, though, because he didn’t make a move toward her. He went straight to the door, opened it, and just walked out of her room. She blinked and tried to control her breathing as she wondered if what she’d seen was a continuation of her nightmare or if he had really, truly, been in her room looking alive and well and un-poisoned.

She still wanted to scream, maybe more than before after that surreal experience, but it still never came. She wouldn’t give the King, real or not, the satisfaction of knowing just how much he still affected her, just how much _power_ he still had over her.

* * *

She figured making it a habit of having her morning coffee at Granny’s wasn’t an ideal routine, but Emma didn’t want to have coffee at the station because they only bought the cheap brew on their limited budget. And she could always have a cup of coffee at her new apartment, but she ran out of her own “luxurious” brew about a week ago and kept forgetting to pick some up at the store. Of course, every morning she realized she’d forgotten to buy more, she could have always gone to get some instead of spending extra money for a single cup each day at the diner. Then again, she couldn’t run into Regina at her apartment and maybe the possibility of seeing her, even if they still weren’t really on speaking terms, was worth paying a little more a month for coffee.

But she didn’t run into Regina that morning. The brunette had come into the diner the last two days and coming in the previous day meant Regina probably knew there was a chance she’d see her there. If Regina hadn’t wanted to talk to her, if she’d wanted to avoid Emma, she would have stayed away from Granny’s so as not to chance anything. And yet, she was there each day as if the next morning would garner a different result except that morning. Emma didn’t want to think too much into it or spend too much time thinking about it. Regina either came to the diner or she didn’t. They barely uttered a word to each other while they were in each other’s sights and Emma had no reason to theorize or want there to be more reason behind Regina’s appearances, and now her absence. The fact that she wasn’t there, however, still left an unsettling feeling in the pit of Emma’s stomach.

Emma didn’t quite shake off the feeling, but she tried not to dwell on it and continued to have her coffee before she headed into the station for her usual shift. But her day was boring and there was no one at the station to keep her company. She ate a bearclaw she’d grabbed from the local donut shop and pulled up a movie on her phone just to pass the time. It did that, passed the time, but it didn’t keep her mind too preoccupied. Although, distracted was the better word choice because her mind was already preoccupied by Regina and her not showing up at the diner. How easily and how much her thoughts involved—more like centered around—Regina was starting to worry her. She knew Regina was important because of Henry, but the way she thought about the brunette, the way she cared a little too much to make things right after Marian, didn’t seem like it was only for Henry’s benefit.

She sighed and ran her clean through her hair as she chewed the final bite of her bearclaw and wiped her glaze-covered fingers off on a napkin. The movie on her phone wasn’t uninteresting, but Emma couldn’t get into it when she had a nagging feeling that things with Regina had gotten way more complicated in the last forty-eight hours, and she knew it didn’t have anything to do with Marian, or even with herself for that matter.

Henry was at school so she couldn’t talk to him, and the last thing Emma really wanted to do was text or call either one of her parents just to have any kind of contact with another human being. She didn’t have anyone to talk to during work hours so she decided to sign off on the last of the paperwork David had yet to complete before she told him to take time off, but only as a break between a few rounds of darts. Once her lunch break came around, she sprang out of the sheriff’s station for two reasons. One, she needed to free herself from the empty confines of the station for a little while and two, she had to break through a few more of Regina’s walls to ensure the brunette was safe and emotionally okay.

Her first stop was the diner in case Regina had decided to forego breakfast in public after all; because the more time Emma had with her thoughts the more she realized she was crazy to think Regina had purposely _not_ avoided her the last few mornings. She realized she would have been an idiot to keep thinking Regina didn’t mind being around her, even if she sent death glares her way. Aside from the time she stayed to eat there with Elsa, Regina had taken off with her food the next day, and she would have done that _before_ she’d looked scared almost to death about the candles.

She’d gotten an answer to one of her questions that day: why was Regina spooked about candles, but she didn’t have a chance to ask more questions just then. At least not yet because Regina wasn’t in the diner for lunch either, just as she hadn’t been that morning for breakfast.

“Hasn’t come by today,” Ruby answered when Emma had asked if she’d seen the other woman. “Think she’s still wigging out over what I saw the other night?”

“It’s definitely a possibility,” Emma muttered. “Thanks, Rubes.”

From there it felt like due diligence and covering bases because she went straight to the Mayor’s office and ignored Anna entirely, even when the newlywed stutteringly insisted Regina wasn’t there. She found out for herself soon enough, though, when she burst into the brunette’s office and saw it was unoccupied and even cleaner and more organized then it usually was when Regina was working. Anna had been right. Regina wasn’t in and by the looks of it she hadn’t come to the office since she locked up after herself at the end of her previous shift.

“I didn’t know how long I should wait for her to show up,” Anna said from behind her. “She never called to say she was taking the day off and I tried to call her at home maybe ten minutes ago, but she didn’t answer.”

Emma sighed and closed the office door before she made her way back through the lobby.

“You should go home,” Emma gently told Anna. “If she hasn’t come in by now, or even attempted to contact you, then she’s not coming.”

She waited for Anna to grab her things and walked her out no matter how much worry had seeped into her heart and mind and screamed at her to find Regina as soon as possible. As soon as they were out of the building, Emma made sure Anna was okay to get home and then tore out of the Town Hall area like a bat out of Hell. She disregarded every posted speed limit and rushed to Mifflin Street with a loud, rattling engine and a subtly shaking car. The old Bug with way too many miles on it apparently didn’t like how much she was pushing it just to get to Regina’s.

She parked on the curb and all but jumped out of the car before she ran—actually _ran_ —to the door.

“Regina. Regina!”

She didn’t bother to knock nicely or ring the doorbell and instead settled on pounding on the thick, white door.

“Regina, please, if you’re in there open up! You weren’t at the diner this morning and you didn’t show up for work. Knowing someone might have it out for you makes it easier for me to assume something bad happened to you.”

She waited for several seconds with no response before she started to pound on the door again with a little more desperation.

“ _Regina_!”

Another few seconds passed before her impatience took over and she looked between the windows on each side of the front door in an attempt to see into the house. There didn’t seem to be any activity on the other side of the door, but Emma had a feeling she wouldn’t find the brunette anywhere else. She slowly breathed out as she reached for the doorknob and hoped Regina wouldn’t hate her further for what she was about to do.

With a turn of the knob and a cautious push forward, the door opened and Emma didn’t take it as a good sign that Regina had left it unlocked.

“Regina,” she called out, quieter once on the other side of the closed door.

Emma eased her way inside and shut the door behind her. She looked around for Regina—or any signs of life at all—and carefully made her way into the foyer. When she stood in the middle of the landing in the center of the first floor, she had several options. There was a dining room ahead of her complete with a drink cart, the kitchen to her right, the winding staircase to the left, a sitting room with a wide open double door to her left, or the closed door of a room near the front door that Emma knew led to Regina’s study. The small gap between the bottom of the door to the study and the hardwood floor displayed a golden glow of light and Emma knew she'd found Regina. 

"Regina, open up," she somewhat tiredly demanded. "I know you're in there. I can see the light on."

A few seconds passed with no response. 

"Regina...whatever it is you're hiding from—"

"Go away," Regina's strained voice cracked as she spoke loud enough to be heard through the door. 

"Why aren't you at work," Emma ignored Regina's request.

Silence.

"Clearly you're hiding from something."

"I said go away, Emma."

At least she's started calling her Emma again. For a while after she’d brought Marian back, Regina had started to refer to her by her last name much like Hook had before he decided he was deeply in love with her.

"I know something's wrong," Emma tried again. "I'm not leaving until you tell me what's happening. You didn't come to the diner this morning, you haven't been to your office. What changed between last night and right now?"

“Did you ever think I was trying to avoid you and your perfect little family?"

"It's been months, Regina. I know you're not still spending all your time staying away from me. Yesterday you told me someone had put a candle in your house and you're not sure what the candle did or was supposed to do, but you're pretty sure it was used with clear intent. Now you've barricaded yourself in your study and won't talk to me."

"It's none of your business why I decided not to go in to work today and you shouldn't be so concerned with my whereabouts. Don't you have a pirate to entertain?"

Emma sighed. 

"We're not..." she trailed off and sighed when words failed her. "If you won't let me in...can I at least let myself in?"

Emma waited as patiently as she could given the circumstances and apparently that was a moment too long because just when she thought the other woman was going to give her an answer, or possibly even open the door herself, a lock clicked into place. Emma immediately looked down at the knob and tried to turn it only to find it was stiff and the door didn't budge when she added her weight behind a gentle push to get in. 

"Go away, Emma," Regina repeated, a little more deflated.

Emma placed her hand on the doorframe and leaned into it as she widened her stance and placed her other hand on her hip. 

"Fine. You can stay locked away if you want, but I'm not just walking away from you. You can push me away all you want, but I won't give up. I know there's something bothering you and even if you think I've lost the right to even say this, we're a team. So...spend your day however you want it. I'll give you some space, but I'll be back every day until I know you're alright."

Emma hesitated, but there wasn't a single sound of movement from behind the door so after a moment she reluctantly left Regina alone. On her way out, she locked the front door before she pulled it shut and wished more than anything that Regina would be okay. 

* * *

The rest of her shift had been just as boring as her morning. She had spent more time thinking about Regina and why the other woman was holed up in her study, probably with some of her strong apple cider in hand. For as long as Emma had known the stubborn woman, she’d never seen her duck and cover. Ever. Aside from her disappearing act after she’d been wrongly accused of Archie’s murder, Regina stood her ground and fought whatever obstacle came her way.

Within the last two days, though, Regina had done everything Emma never expected her to do. She seemed fragile as soon as Ruby had mentioned the candles and things had only gone downhill for Regina since then. It was troubling as much as it was disconcerting. Emma definitely didn’t like the idea of Regina, a woman who usually growled and had some sassy comeback when faced with opposition, cowering alone in her home.

She put thoughts of Regina aside for a few hours to finish up the paperwork she’d mostly ignored before her lunch break, but every so often something about Regina’s behavior popped back into the front of her mind and nagged at her until she finally gave in. Though the paperwork in front of her still had a page left of information to supply before her signature was required, Emma abandoned it as she pulled open the top right drawer of her desk and brought out a memo pad. She threw the pad down on top of the paperwork she decided she would keep ignoring and started to scribble out a couple of key words with bullet points.

Candles. Cowering.

Regina might have been pale at the mention of the candles, but she still went back to work afterward, hadn’t she? What had changed since finding out she wasn’t the only one who’d found a candle? Well, there was the fact that Regina had found the candle in her bedroom while Ruby had just stumbled upon them in the woods. It seemed personal with Regina. Whatever was happening somehow involved her above anyone else. So…maybe she’d found another candle?

Emma puffed out a heavy sigh and tried her hardest to make a connection out of thin air. None of it made sense. The candles, the lack of information, Regina. None of it seemed related and yet, everything Regina did was in response to yet another hint Emma hadn’t picked up on.

Frustrated, Emma started to replay the events in her mind starting from the day before Regina’s freak out. Regina had walked into the diner with Elsa and glared at her as per usual. She’d said hi to Henry and stared at Robin—which was also normal—and then things had gotten awkward at the Charming’s table, but that had nothing to do with Regina. She’d been fine. Until the next morning. She’d been shaky and almost completely devoid of color as though she was about to be physically ill. Something had changed. Then she’d overheard the conversation with Ruby and focused on the candles like they had personally done something to her. She’d asked what color they were and then ran off when Ruby’s answer had finally been sufficient enough for her. When she’d been confronted about it later, she’d admitted to having found a white candle under her pillow and informed Emma that she hadn’t had a clue as to why it was there or who could have put it there.

And that was the last time Emma had spoken to her before the conversation through the study door. Regina hadn’t gone to work or the diner and refused to let Emma into the study for a face-to-face conversation. She knew the last person Regina wanted to talk to was probably her, but Regina had never acted so drastically when she wanted to avoid her. What was the common factor between Regina’s deteriorating social skills? One day she’s fine and the next she’s in panic mode and the day after that she seemed traumatized.

Her brow was knit and she looked either seriously concentrated or painfully constipated while she kept her eyes on the two words she’d written out in the pad. With her pen poised by her shoulder, she played with her pen cap while the pen’s point stayed directed downward at the pad on her desk. She was so immersed in her confusing thoughts that she didn’t hear the two sets of clomping footsteps as they approached her office and she completely missed a male voice call out her name from the doorway twice before the owner of the voice clomped his way over to her desk.

A hand was gently placed on her shoulder and the same voice called her name yet again. The physical contact pulled Emma from her mystery-solving groove and she looked up to see Robin say her name for a forth time before he flashed her a friendly and partially amused smile.

“Are you alright,” he asked, his smile still in place.

Emma breathed out with a bit of relief, though she hadn’t noticed how tense she’d made herself over the thoughts that plagued her tired mind.

“Yeah, just thinking about…stuff.” Emma had almost said Regina, but then she remembered she was talking to Robin, and Little John who remained in the doorway of her office, and made sure to keep the other woman out of the conversation.

Robin gave a nod of comprehension and continued with the conversation without pressing her on what “stuff” entailed.

“Well, I talked to my Men and got two of them to agree to help. The others are pursuing other job opportunities at the moment, but I figured you wouldn’t want a horde of people working here anyway. Something about a budget and more paperwork?”

Emma smiled and it wasn’t as stiff as most of the smiles she offered the other blond.

“Right,” she confirmed for him before she looked behind Robin at Little John. “So…it’s just you two again tonight?”

“Yes,” Robin answered while Little John nodded. “I told the other two that we would alternate shifts and if they wanted to give themselves a night before taking on their new responsibilities that Little John and I could cover tonight’s shift.”

“Great. Did you find anything last night?”

“We saw a cabin,” Little John spoke up.

“There was a light on inside, but it didn’t look too troubling,” Robin added. “Little John walked several paces behind me so we each got a look at it and neither of us saw anything worrisome.”

“None of the Men live there,” Emma asked with notable curiosity.

Robin shook his head.

“No, the Men who still live out in the woods all share a rather large cabin on the other side of town closer to the main part of Storybrooke.”

“So someone who’s not one of the Merry Men is living out in the woods? That seems odd,” Emma said.

“I suppose,” Robin conceded. “Although I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with living in the woods.”

“You might be a little biased on that front,” Emma deadpanned. “In my experience, people living in the woods are usually up to no good.”

“Shall I assume you’re including my Men in that assumption,” Robin joked with a grin.

That time Emma had forced the smile she flashed him. She couldn’t find it in herself to befriend the man Regina had been dating until she had reunited him with his wife. It felt wrong to form that kind of relationship with him even though they were both thieves and could easily find common ground. Everything in her life seemed to point back to Regina and though Emma definitely thought to question why exactly that was aside from the obvious answer that it was better for Henry if she and Regina were at least friendly, there were more important things to focus on.

“So far you and the Merry Men haven’t given me any reason to think you’re scheming against anyone so no, I’m not including any of you in my assumptions,” she honestly answered as her tense smile faded and the conversation turned serious again. “But I think you guys should make two passes by the cabin tonight instead of just one.”

“Okay,” Robin said with a nod.

“And I guess I’ll leave you to it,” Emma said as she stood up.

Robin started to head toward the office door and Little John moved into the work room to free up the doorway. Emma followed close behind as she gathered what she needed from her office and shut the door on her way out.

“Same time tomorrow,” Emma asked as she made her way toward the exit and Robin and Little John walked her out.

“Of course, and I have your number should any concerns suddenly arise.”

“You know how to use a phone, though, right? Because Hook still hasn’t grasped the concept that there isn’t actually an ‘Emma’ button built in on any phone.”

Robin chuckled.

“You expect a pirate who was never part of any of the curses that befell the townspeople to understand what speed dial is?”

“Right,” Emma breathed out a quick and quiet laugh with a slightly uncomfortable expression on her face, still not ready to accept his attempt at friendship, before she left Robin and Little John inside the station and headed back to her apartment.

* * *

Leopold sat comfortably in a loveseat in front of the unlit fireplace. He picked at and smoothed out the material of his robes until his interest was piqued by the sound of the front door opening. His gaze immediately lifted to settle on the man responsible for his return to the living world as that man shut the door behind him upon reentry into the cabin.

“Did all go well,” the King asked and continued to relax in his chair as though it was his throne.

“Yes,” the man answered with his subtle accent, a dark wooden box with a small metal grate on either side tucked under one of his arms. “If she hasn’t figured out all of this is really happening, the message will be clear with this.”

The man raised the box to emphasize what “this” meant before he placed the box on a table against the wall near one of two bedrooms, the table not far from the front door.

“How did things turn out for you, my King,” he asked as he crossed the room and took a seat to Leopold.

“Exceedingly well,” Leopold answered. “She seemed terrified of me. From what I gathered on my walk around this curious little town, she’s also spent the day in her castle.”

“House,” the man gently corrected. “In this land, a person living in a place like hers is called a house or home.”

“Her house, then,” Leopold said. “You know, for all the time I have been gone she still looks much the same.”

“She cursed this town, your Majesty. It froze time here for everyone until the curse was broken by the prophesized Savior, your granddaughter.”

Leopold smiled.

“My dearest Snow has a child?”

“Two,” the man replied. “Emma is the eldest. She’s about the same age as your daughter now due to the curse, but the newest addition to the family is a healthy baby boy. Only a few months old now.”

“That is wonderful news. Perhaps I shall have a chance to see them soon.”

“Perhaps,” the man said with a kind smile.

“Regina has caused a great deal of trouble for my family, though. I cannot let that go unpunished, especially since she is the reason I have not seen my family grow throughout the years. I was not even in attendance at my daughter’s wedding.”

“Yes, she has done a terrible disservice to your kingdom and many people have suffered because of her,” the man bitterly agreed.

The two sat in silence for a moment before Leopold turned his head to look at the man beside him again. He smiled and assured the man, “She will soon pay for her crimes. We shall make sure of that.”

Across the room, a hiss erupted from the box on the table as if on cue to reinforce the twisted promise recently made. Both men mischievously grinned with an evil gleam in their equally dark eyes in response to the sound and the townspeople were wholly and very unfortunately unprepared for their next course of action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a little on the short side, but we're about to get into the bigger part of the plot in the next chapter so I wanted to keep this update strictly to the last of the beginning build up. There will be more Emma/Regina interaction in the upcoming chapters too. The end of this chapter, after the door scene, was really hard for me to write because I knew there wasn't going to be any more scenes between them until next chapter so believe me when I tell you that I want to write scenes for them just as much, if not more, than you want to read them. And they're coming!
> 
> I'm also not going to take complete credit for the door scene because even though I wanted Emma to go to Regina just for Regina to be stubborn and push her away, I didn't originally plan to have it happen through a door. After 4x01 I thought using that as part of the barrier between Emma and Regina right now would make more sense , though, given what's going on with Regina so I incorporated it into the story.
> 
> Please review and let me know what you think so far. Also, thank you so much for the support and reviews for this so far. I really appreciate the feedback! :)


	4. Chapter 4

There was a calm and refreshing breeze in the air that morning as the sun took it’s time peaking through the clouds. The streets were bathed in a white and light blue glow that instantly put a smile on Snow White’s face as she walked toward Granny’s Diner. Everything seemed peaceful and part of her wanted to forego breakfast inside for more time in the comforting weather and captivating scenery outside, but she was meeting Emma inside and that took precedence over her love of the nature that surrounded her.

Before she walked under the white wooden arch that led into the outside dining area and entrance to the inside dining, Snow took a look around her one last time. Her smile never left her face as she looked at the nearly empty streets that were slightly slicked with morning dew. Her gaze travelled upward from the pavement to focus on the businesses on the other side of the street that had yet to open for the day and suddenly her smile vanished. Walking along the sidewalk across the street, she swore she saw her father.

He hadn’t seemed to notice her as he continued along past Granny’s toward the center of town and he oddly enough hadn’t looked any different than how he had when she’d buried him, aside from the fact that he no longer appeared to be dead. But that was insane. She’d cried on Regina’s shoulder after the service right next to his casket and later watched as he was placed in a burial plot beside her mother. It had been one of the most painful days in her life and she would never forget it or the fact that he was gone and she was only left with a stepmother whom she’d later realized hadn’t wanted anything to do with her.

Snow closed her eyes and gently shook her head as she willed the image of her father out of her mind. When she opened her eyes, he was gone just as he was supposed to be, but there was a feeling she couldn’t shake so she stared at the spot across the street he’d occupied only seconds ago for a moment longer. Confusion was evident on her face, her eyes narrowed at the place she thought she’d seen Leopold and her lips parted in disbelief at the absurdity of what she’d momentarily thought to be real.

“No,” Snow said with denial and shook her head again before she turned and walked past the outside dining area to the door.

* * *

Emma sat at the family’s usual table with her hands wrapped around a warm mug. After she’d left the station the previous day, her mother had called and asked if they could have breakfast at Granny’s around eight the next morning. Though she’d just seen her mother at the family breakfast they’d all had two days prior, Emma had agreed because Snow had insisted a little mother/daughter time was in order.

So she waited patiently for her mother to arrive even though boredom had started to consume her and had tried to encourage her to fall asleep at the table. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before because thoughts of Regina only made her worry to the point of complete alertness. Every ten minutes she’d worked up the nerve to call Regina and check in, but just as she hovered over Regina’s name in her contacts list she second guessed her decision and left the other woman alone. She’d tossed and turned as she tested her will to not call Regina in the middle of the night and the biggest reason for her to not break her resolve was to give the brunette space as she’d promised through the woman’s closed study door. Another thought then sprang to mind that Regina probably wouldn’t answer anyway so it’s not like calling her would really wake her up.

It took an entire night and a collective hour or two of sleep, but no calls or texts had been made to Regina, or to anyone else for that matter. She’d resisted every urge and did what she had told Regina she would do, which was to let Regina have a whole day to herself.

That day was over and a new one had begun so Emma’s thoughts wandered from breakfast with her mother to what Regina might do that day. She sincerely hoped whatever had kept the brunette locked away in her study was handled and that she wouldn’t have to try and break down a door just to make sure Regina wasn’t in any real danger.

Her thoughts were stopped there when the bell jingled above the door and Snow walked into the diner. She smiled at her mother as the pixie-haired woman looked around and then caught her gaze in the quiet diner. Snow smiled back and headed straight toward her without even giving a drink order before she took a seat across the table.

“Hey,” Emma greeted.

“Hi,” Snow cheerily returned the greeting as she settled in.

A waitress came up to the table and Snow ordered hot tea before she had Emma’s undivided attention again.

“So, I know it’s only been a few days since we last saw each other,” Snow started, “but it sounds like I’ve missed plenty of things.”

“It’s been an interesting couple of days,” Emma confessed with a nod.

“Your father told me there might be something going on with Regina.”

“Mm,” Emma hummed in noncommittal agreement. “I’m sure he doesn’t know much. We barely had anything to talk about when I mentioned what the problem was.”

“And there’s more to talk about now?”

The waitress delivered Snow’s tea and she smiled and thanked the server who then took their breakfast orders. When she left, Emma picked up their conversation.

“Not exactly. There’s a stronger gut feeling that this is bigger than anything I could image it being, but there’s no evidence to prove this is anything other than Regina’s subconscious getting the best of her.”

“Hmm,” Snow frowned. “Regina has her moments, but she usually doesn’t get too into her own head. Usually she gets into _other_ people’s heads.”

“I know! That’s what’s so hard about all of this. I know there’s something happening, but I can’t do anything about it until I have more to go on.”

Snow flashed an almost knowing smile at her and reached over the table to place a hand on top of one of hers. The gesture calmed Emma a bit, but it didn’t change anything. She sighed and Snow rubbed her thumb over the back of Emma’s hand for a moment before she pulled away.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Snow reassured her.

“That seems kind of impossible right now,” Emma flatly said. “She’s acting like a victim, but I don’t see any reason for her to be. It’s like…it’s like there’s something haunting her. Those damn candles just set her off and then yesterday she wouldn’t leave her study. I’ve never seen her like that. I’ve never seen anyone act like that except skittish kids in the system with me, and they all had their own reasons to be so distrusting and scared. Hell, I’ve had a few reasons myself.”

Snow cocked her head to the side and Emma continued.

“It’s like…I don’t know. It’s like she…well, like she saw a _ghost_ or something.”

Snow’s eyes quickly lit up with a question.

“A ghost,” she asked.

“Yeah. I…I mean, I really don’t know how else to describe the look on her face and we weren’t even talking about people. We were talking about inanimate objects.”

Emma looked up long enough to realize her mother had something on her mind. She furrowed her brow and inquired about just what she was thinking.

“Why does that make you look so curious?”

“Oh,” Snow paused for a second before she shook her head. “It’s just that, before I walked in, I thought I saw—”

The bell above the door jingled again and caught Emma and Snow’s attention, their conversation briefly forgotten.

Emma’s jaw dropped at the sight of Regina. She hadn’t been expecting the brunette to be there and she was sure her face showed it.

Regina’s eyes first landed on Emma and for a second, the blonde thought she saw her relax. Then, Regina saw Snow across from her and everything changed. Anger flashed in her eyes and Regina instantly clenched her jaw. The brunette took a few steps toward their table and expressed a burst of outrage Emma never expected her to have seemingly bottled up at that point.

“The fact that my son stems from your father’s bloodline makes me sick. I love Henry and I know that DNA, _biology_ , doesn’t change who he is and how he’s been raised and the fact that I will never look at him with anything more than the love I feel for him unconditionally, but I’ll be _damned_ if he grows up to be anything like the King.”

Snow and Emma were both completely startled and shocked by the feral way Regina addressed the subject.

“Why are you upset about my father all of a sudden,” Snow asked on the border of wonder and realization. “Did you see him too?”

“ _Too_ ,” Regina asked as her anger immediately fell away to be replaced by widened eyes and a look that screamed, “Please tell me I misheard you.”

Snow nodded and explained, “I could have sworn I saw him outside on my way in here earlier.”

Regina’s hand flew to her stomach and she gulped in a way that made Emma wonder if she had just swallowed bile. She looked physically ill yet again as she stood in front of them.

“I was just about to tell Emma that I saw him,” Snow continued as though she couldn’t see what Emma saw on Regina’s face. “I was also going to mention how I thought I was probably just imagining it because I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how she and Neal won’t get to know him.”

While Snow had been talking, Emma’s eyes had never left Regina. Snow’s focus had moved back and forth between Emma and Regina so she probably hadn’t caught the way Regina’s pale expression resolved to a steely gaze filled with an honesty that made Emma’s stomach drop with a sense of dread she couldn’t justify.

“I hope they _never_ have to know him,” Regina growled in a low, even tone.

Snow blinked and clearly didn’t understand Regina’s reaction when she said, “But…he’s their grandfather.”

“He’s a _monster_ ,” Regina corrected before she took a deep breath to steady herself then abruptly changed gears. “Suddenly I’m not very hungry anymore.”

Regina didn’t hesitate to rush out of the diner and Emma shot out of her chair with the same lack of hesitation before she followed the brunette out.

“Wait,” Emma called out as Regina made it halfway to the arch at the end of the path. “Regina, wait.”

Emma didn’t stop at the stairs as she went out to the same spot in the outside dining area she always seemed to find herself standing in whenever she chased after the brunette there. Thankfully, Regina did what she always did and stopped before she could get away then turned around to face Emma.

“You can’t keep ducking out like this,” Emma said. “Talk to me.”

Regina sighed and closed her eyes and Emma saw it in her expression that the brunette was on the verge of tears. She wasn’t sure why Regina seemed compelled to cry just then, but Emma could just tell it wasn’t because she was scared or sad. When brown eyes opened to focus on her again, Emma knew right then exactly what Regina’s withheld tears were brought on by: vulnerability.

“I—”

Whatever Regina was about to admit to Emma was cut off by the diner door opening. Emma looked over her shoulder to see her mother stare right at Regina with concern.

“Is everything alright,” Snow asked as she slowly walked down the steps to stand partially behind Emma.

Emma looked back at Regina and watched with a knotted stomach, but also a bit of awe, as Regina composed herself in a sad but beautiful way that showed her strength as much as her fragility. Emma could tell it was a method of self-protection and she admired Regina for the careful way she put up her armor, though she honestly did want Regina to finally open up to her.

Her admiration faded into the background with Regina’s next words, however.

“Please keep Henry from me. I need him to stay with you until this is all over. It’s what’s best.”

Emma’s heart broke when Regina’s voice cracked at the end of her request. Emma felt the sincerity in her belief that Henry would better off if he stayed away from her and Emma had known Regina well enough to know that the brunette hated being kept from her son.

“Regina,” Emma softly tried to plead with her as she stepped toward the other woman.

It was one step too many because as soon as Emma thought she would be able to reach out and stop Regina, the brunette surrounded herself with purple smoke and disappeared. Emma’s shoulders sagged and she quickly felt defeated. She slowly turned back to Snow and the other woman looked just as saddened by what had transpired.

The two of them headed back into the diner to finish their breakfast and neither one of them noticed the once dead man who’d brought all of this on as he stood behind the bushes that surrounded the outer boundaries of the diner. Leopold had watched the entire scene unfold with intent focus and in the end he was surprised by the entire interaction between the three women.

* * *

Even with more worrying behavior and unfinished sentences from Regina to think about during her shift, Emma anxiously tapped her pen against her desk as she waited for the big hand to tick into place on the clock and officially end her work day. She had somewhere to be even if she wasn’t wanted there and she also had to talk to Robin and the two additional Merry Men that would be with him that night.

The clock struck six and not long after that, four people walked into the station to meet her. She felt herself relax at the sound of their boots and left her office to greet the group in the work room. When she saw who else Robin had brought with him, she stopped in her tracks and gaped at a familiar face.

“Mulan?”

The warrior with unwavering moral codes and determination stood to Robin’s left and flashed a small, polite smile and courteous nod in response to being addressed.

“Hello, Emma,” Mulan softly greeted.

“When did you join the Merry Men?”

“Just before the second curse brought us here. I prefer not to talk about it.”

Emma frowned, but allowed Mulan her privacy and got back to the problem at hand. She turned to Robin before she asked about their partial, not yet official, case.

“I take it from the lack of a phone call before shift that you still didn’t find anything at the cabin?”

Robin shook his head.

“The lights were on by the time we passed it on our first round through town, but there didn’t seem to be any activity there,” Robin informed her. “Second time around the lights were off, but it was almost eleven so it seemed like whoever was there had gone to bed. Nothing suspicious about that.”

Emma grimaced through her displeasure at the continually lacking information.

“I still think that’s our best bet,” Emma said. “If all four of you are going out tonight, split up into pairs and make a total of four passes by the cabin.”

“Are you sure you’re not just putting your attention on something that’s not there,” Robin asked. “We haven’t found anything yet and it doesn’t look likely that we’ll find anything at all.”

 “I have a gut feeling that that’s where this leads back to. If we could approach the cabin without warning whoever’s there that we’re onto them, I would’ve knocked on their door already.”

Tension filled the air and a moment of silence washed over them like waves against a shore. When Emma looked from Robin to Mulan, she saw a look of what appeared to be understanding on the other woman’s face. It seemed odd, but Emma didn’t take the time to question it.

“Just do me a favor and keep your focus on the cabin. Try not to get yourself noticed when you’re going by. If they suspect we think they’re up to something, or if they even know we’re patrolling, we might not ever catch them doing anything. And they’ll get away with whatever they might be doing.”

Robin responded with a quick nod of comprehension. He seemed to understand she was set in her ways and as ridiculous as her concern seemed without evidence to prove she had any reason to feel that way, he didn’t second guess her.

“Whatever you think is best,” Robin said before he and the others started their shift.

* * *

Emma didn’t rush that time when she drove to Regina’s. She’d left Henry with her parents and though they all argued that she shouldn’t run off, Emma told them it was better to do whatever she could before things were to get out of hand. Snow was the first to drop the argument and conceded to Emma’s unexplained plan. Snow had even told Charming and, because of his proximity, Henry about what had happened at breakfast.

She was going to do what she wanted with or without her family’s blessing, but after Snow had elaborated on Emma’s desire to help Regina she had all of their support. It made her feel better to have them behind her and surprisingly made her more confident in her decision to go to Regina. She would always go after Regina, but sometimes it helped to know she wasn’t alone in her belief that Regina deserved her help, _any_ help.

From her parents’ apartment, she went straight to Regina’s with a travel cup of coffee, a thick, plaid blanket, and a readiness to be there for Regina whether she wanted someone around her or not.

She parked on the curb where she usually parked whenever she ended up at the other woman’s place and went right to work. She kept the blanket at her side in the passenger’s seat, but otherwise made herself comfortable in her own seat. Just like many days throughout the last four months, her night was going to be long.

Half an hour later and there was a little excitement at least. Her phone chimed in her pocket, which surprised and then immediately worried her. She pulled her phone out faster than she previously ever had and fumbled with it before she put it to her ear. She hadn’t gotten a chance to check her caller ID so when she answered it was with poorly concealed panic.

“What is it? Did you find something?”

“Miss Swan,” Regina addressed her with a little edge to her voice.

“Regina,” Emma breathed out a little relief with the name, but quickly changed pace. “We’re back to ‘Miss Swan’…again?”

“ _Why_ are you outside of my house,” Regina asked and skipped right over Emma’s question.

“Uh, because someone managed to sneak in and put a candle in your _bedroom_?! That’s a pretty personal thing and you seem intent to keep everyone at arms length.”

“So you’re guarding my home? My hero.”

Emma rolled her eyes.

“Is it so hard for you to accept my help?”

“Whatever your reason for being here, Miss Swan, I can assure you your services are not wanted nor needed.”

“I think we’ve had this conversation before,” Emma said.

Regina huffed into the phone.

“I don’t need your protection,” Regina insisted. “I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

“Are you sure about that? Because if you were capable of that, I _know_ you wouldn’t have asked me to keep Henry away from you. You would _never_ say that unless it’s something serious.”

“ _Henry’s_ the one who needs you. You should be with him, not on some unnecessary stakeout in front of my house.”

“He hates not being able to see you,” Emma continued. “In case you were wondering how he’s doing. He’s trying to do the right thing by giving you the space you think you need from him, but he really just wants to help.”

“What does he know,” Regina asked with a soft voice and hint of concern.

“Nothing. I just told him there might be someone in town who’s less than friendly and that being around you might cause some problems.”

There was a pause on the other end before Regina said, “Well, he can’t help. He can’t even be on the curb in that car with you until all of this is over.”

“Then help me make that happen sooner by telling me what ‘all of this’ actually is.”

“I told you I’m fine,” Regina firmly stated.

“Regina, quit stonewalling and tell what’s going on. Maybe you don’t owe me anything after Marian, but I’m not leaving here until I know you’re safe so…you might as well tell me what I’m looking out for while I’m on my stakeout. You want me to keep Henry safe, you _know_ I’ll do whatever it takes to do that. Part of me being out here is to keep him safe because you know if _I_ wasn’t here, he would be. So wouldn’t it be better for everyone involved if I don’t get blindsided by whatever’s affecting you?”

“You shouldn’t _be_ involved—”

“I’m always involved. And Henry too. That’s how it’s always been and always will be.”

Emma waited through more silence on the line as Regina hesitated to give a response. Minutes ticked by and for a moment, Emma thought Regina might have hung up on her.

"I...don't think your mother imagined seeing her father," Regina finally confessed. 

"Seriously?"

"It might sound crazy, but I have my reasons for thinking it's true."

"Okay," Emma slowly said. "Care to share those reasons?"

Regina sighed.

"I've been having nightmares the last few nights. More like memories I prefer to forget actually."

"And they have something to do with him?"

"…Yes," Regina reluctantly answered. 

"How?"

"He— My nightmares revolve around him. And yesterday morning...I saw him too. I woke up and he was there."

"Well, my mom hasn't been having any dreams of him, but...she did say she's been thinking about him lately."

"Miss Swan, just because I might be bothered by my painful past relived in my dreams doesn't make me delusional. I know what I saw."

"I didn't say I'm discrediting you because you could be imagining things," Emma quickly defended herself. "If you say you saw him, you saw him. I'm not going anywhere even if it turns out seeing him was all in your mind."

"It wasn't," Regina growled. 

"Okay," Emma easily said partly to agree with her and partly to placate her. 

There was another moment void of any conversation between them. The only sound that carried over the phone was the sound of both women’s breathing as they sat in a not entirely uncomfortable silence, but not one that put them at ease either. 

"I still don't need you to stay out there all night," Regina broke the silence first. 

"And I'm still not leaving," Emma replied. 

"Fine, but don't expect any hospitality from me."

"Never," Emma smiled. 

* * *

When Regina woke up that morning, she was calm. She still had had another nightmare, but it had come and gone in flashes and dealt with other aspects of her unwanted marriage to the King aside from the physical events she never wanted to mention. 

It had been the same for a while since the ceremony. After marrying Leopold it was hard for Regina to feel any sense of independence or freedom within the confines of the palace. She had been stuck in her chamber overnight. She would be allowed to have dinner with the family, and if there were visiting royals she would eat with all of them as well, and then Leopold would excuse her. He would have a guard usher her to her chamber and then stand guard outside of it to ensure she stayed put until she was needed again.

When she’d asked him why he kept her locked away, he would always say he hadn’t liked how she looked at the other men in the room or that he disapproved of her lack of enthusiasm when conversing with Snow at the table.

“You are to be a better mother to her and until you find a way to prove you have changed your attitude toward my daughter, you shall remain in your chamber to think on ways to make that happen,” he would explain when the way she treated, or didn’t treat, Snow was the problem.

She had been happy enough to avoid time spent on her back underneath Leopold in his bed, but sometimes the isolation felt worse. She was caged when she misbehaved in accordance to how Leopold thought she was supposed to act and he only allowed her any time with himself. Even when others were around her at the palace, she wasn’t permitted to speak to them unless he said so. She wasn’t allowed to do much more than curtsy in their presence because anytime she spoke or smiled, Leopold saw more to her actions than there was to actually see.

That had been before the Genie’s arrival. When he came along, things got worse before they got better. She had been living like that for years before Leopold had found his lamp on the beach during one of his walks. The Genie was her perfect way out. She had been playing a part for months, the same trapped and displeased woman that still looked so beautifully innocent on the outside. But by then her thoughts had been filled with an exit strategy. Her dreams at that point had no longer been about riding a horse outside of the kingdom and running from it and the King for the rest of her life. She didn’t want to run, she wanted to rule. Magic would be the thing that saved her and with magic came power. That power would grant her the ultimate freedom, much better than running ever would. She would make them all pay. She would make them live under her thumb instead of the other way around.

How quickly she’d gotten the Genie to give her what she’d wanted. She had spent too long feeling and physically being trapped, contained, secluded. He had alienated her before she’d become the Evil Queen, but at least when she deemed the power worth whatever sacrifices she might have had to make along the way, it had been her choice to further alienate herself from the people. At least then she wouldn’t have to remain inside a locked chamber to achieve that alienation. She could go where she pleased and do what she pleased…and she had. She had found a way to break out of her cage. She had been told what to do and what to say until she’d pushed herself to have her way; until she’d pushed herself away from chains that bound her since her union to the suffocating King.  

The thoughts in her head that morning when she woke were anything but calming or positive. Her nightmare, or series of nightmares all rolled into one night, was still hellish in its own right, but she had realized something. By staying locked away in her house, it put her right back to the days when she still had to follow the King's every command, to give him all she had in herself and her station to give. She had been trapping herself in the past as soon as the nightmares had started, but she wasn't that young woman anymore. She had achieved strength through becoming the Evil Queen and she'd fought through more pain and loss to get where she was now. She couldn't revert to her old, villainous ways, but she was stronger than how she'd been responding to everything. Wasn't she?

Without Leopold in her house that morning when she woke, she went through her morning routine that she had barely attempted and had most certainly failed the previous day. On her way out of the house, she noticed the eyesore of a car that an annoying blonde had deliberately parked outside before she'd gone to bed. Without hesitation, Regina went to the VW Beetle and looked inside the driver's window. 

Emma Swan was curled up in her seat with a blanket thrown over her, her face pressed against her shoulder, and the top of her head against where the window met the car door. Her brow was furrowed in deep thought and possible worry, her expression less than peaceful as she slept. It was curious to see Emma was bothered even in sleep. It seemed she never got any rest, but Regina wasn’t able to accurately conclude that since she wasn’t sure what Emma could possibly be thinking about in her unconscious state.

Suddenly, Regina furrowed her own brow in thought and tilted her head to one side as she considered the blonde huddled up inside the car. She may not have said it like a promise, but Emma had stated with fierce determination at least that she wasn’t giving up. And there Emma was, still parked outside and asleep in what looked like a painful position just to keep her safe when she still didn’t know the whole story behind her newly expressed fear and concern since the nightmares had started.

Regina slowly raised a hand to the window and just as slowly touched the glass with the tips of her index and middle fingers as if to reach out and touch Emma. Confusion and wonder appeared on the brunette’s features as she continued to stare at the Savior before her. Emma always seemed to be there even without the stated determination to do so. Emma had pushed her out of the Wraith’s way when she had been marked for death. Emma had used her magic to help her destroy the trigger before it could destroy the town and take her life. The voiced reason behind those events led back to Henry, but there was something to respect and admire about Emma. There always had been. And maybe Emma had found something to admire in her too, because not even Snow had reached out and defended her in the ways Emma had—or, at least, not with the same root of determination behind those ways.

“Why do you keep coming back,” Regina softly asked as she continued to stare at Emma, her brow still furrowed.

She stayed there, by the car, with her fingers on the window for only a moment longer before she dropped her hand to her side and went to her own car. It was a new day and just as she had decided the day before, she had no intention of letting Leopold trap her anymore.

* * *

She hadn’t had much sleep, but the start of a car woke Emma in less than a minute. She felt groggy as she blinked away the haze over her eyes caused by sleep and became cognizant enough to watch a black Mercedes back out of the driveway and take off down the street. Emma stretched as she watched Regina leave and heavily exhaled through her nose when the Mercedes turned down a cross street before it disappeared from Emma’s line of sight. It felt like a small weight had been lifted just by seeing Regina leave the house, but she didn’t waste another second wondering about how or why as soon as that realization hit her. It was too early to think that deeply about anything let alone about Regina.

Emma popped her neck to alleviate the tension created by her poor choice of sleeping arrangement and hissed then groaned when she felt the somewhat debilitating stiffness of her neck. She rubbed it for a moment before she threw the blanket off of herself onto the passenger seat then turned over the engine and drove off in the same direction Regina had only a minute or two prior to her. She looped around the block to get to Granny’s and ordered the biggest travel cup of coffee to go— and Regina was nowhere inside the diner—before she headed to the center of town.

The clock above the library revealed that it was 7:25 and the sun had only just begun to shine down on Storybrooke, the yellows of the sun’s rays still faint as it tried to bathe the streets and buildings. It was then Emma allowed herself to be amazed at the reality that Regina had served as her alarm clock that morning even though she’d only gotten an hour or two of sleep. It appeared even after years of being free from the foster system Emma was still a light sleeper.

She parked the Bug in one of the parking spots next to one side of the library and took her coffee with her into the building. Thankfully for her, Belle had started opening the place up around seven in the morning instead of eight. She hadn’t quite figured out why by that point, but it wasn’t her place to pry into Belle’s personal life and her reason for opening an hour earlier every morning even though she had finally married a man she’d loved for years seemed personal.

Regardless of Belle’s reason, Emma had walked into the library with a mission and it had nothing to do with the woman who ran the place, but she did need that woman’s assistance.

“Belle?”

There was some shuffling of papers and possibly shoes, though the scuffs and clacks made by the footwear wasn’t as loud or distinct like the sound of Regina’s heels. She heard a faintly muttered, “oh” followed by, “darn” a few seconds later. Emma frowned and looked past the main desk into a small room behind it. The light was on and though the muttering had been brief, shadows moved back there for another moment before the blue-eyed brunette emerged with a smile.

“Emma,” she said, pleasantly surprised. “Hi. Sorry…about that…back there. I’m still trying to organize things around here.”

Emma smiled back.

“Not a problem,” she replied.

“So, what can I do for the town’s sheriff,” Belle asked as she stepped up to the desk.

“I’m hoping to do a little research, but…I’m not sure how the Dewey Decimal System works for books on magic?”

Belle chuckled.

“Okay. Well, I can definitely help with that,” she said as she moved around the desk and led Emma to the stacks. “There are a _lot_ of texts on magic so what exactly are you hoping to research?”

“Uh, candles and nightmares and dead kings?”

Emma laughed a little to ease the seriousness of what sounded ridiculous to say out loud.

Belle tilted her head to the side and flashed an amused smile though she regarded the blonde with curiosity.

“Uh, I’m not sure there’s a specific volume on all of that,” Belle stated, “but there are some books on kings. They’re about our world’s—the Enchanted Forest’s—history.”

“Well, I guess that’s as good as it gets,” Emma shrugged. “If you could point me one of the history books about King Leopold and possibly, if there are any, books on spells that require using candles.”

“Oh, your grandfather?”

Belle almost looked happy or maybe even excited at the prospect of Emma wanting to learn about her family.

“Yeah. Him,” Emma quickly answered and shifted uncomfortably at the familial title.

Belle flashed another smile and then moved through one of the stacks until she found the books she had been looking for.

“Here’s a book about your grandfather. It covers the time from his coronation to his…demise, with a little background on your family tree.”

Belle handed over the book and continued to look for more. Emma casually flipped through the book in her hands while she waited for the next few more minutes it took to find the other books. By the time Belle had finished giving her all the books that were relevant to Emma’s search parameters, Emma had her hands full. She sat down in the stacks with all of the books and started to read through them.

She had been left alone with her research for a while as Belle went back to work and after a while, she found a few spells about using candles to spark things. Memories, dreams, vision quests, and most of them were filed under light magic. They were harmless and usually done with good intention. In another book that mentioned a few spells, but mostly dealt with the background information about certain ingredients most commonly used in spells, she found out just how many uses there were for candles. Depending on what spell a particular color candle was used for, that one color had several different meanings and symbolic attachments. And that was just light magic, because apparently Belle had only supplied her with books on the good kind of magic.

With a sigh, Emma closed the book and set it aside with the other books she’d read through then stood up and looked around for books on a less helpful, more harmful magic. It took another long sitting period with the books before she found information about purple, black, and thankfully white candles with ill intent. Black magick. Magick with a “k”. The old kind of magic that Emma only knew from movies and the occasional fantasy novel.

Emma didn’t bother with the other colors and directed her attention to the many uses of white candles. In the use of a Pagan ritual, white candles were said to accomplish any purpose. In general, white candles could be substituted for almost every color of candle except black. Usually white candles were used for purity or peace. They weren’t commonly used in black magick rituals, but in the rare cases they could be harnessed for dark purposes they had the ability to incur bad dreams. According to that book, the subject of the dream affected whether or not the dream was good or bad, like it would be without any of the magic behind it.

It explained the possibility of Regina’s nightmares. Regina’s appearance and behavior had changed and that had only happened after she’d found the candle in her bed. Regina thought Snow really had seen Leopold and also thought Emma believed she was only delusional because of the focal point in her nightmares. The nightmares had started after the candle’s discovery and the nightmares were about Regina’s past. Regina’s past included Leopold and she claimed to have seen him in her bedroom. She needed to know more about Regina’s time with Leopold.

“Emma?”

She immediately looked up to see Belle with a worried expression directed at her.

“Yeah?”

“Your…your phone. It’s ringing,” Belle pointed to her jacket.

Emma heard it as soon as Belle mentioned her phone. She reached into her pocket and pulled it out.

“It’s been ringing the last few minutes,” Belle informed her just before Emma answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Emma? It’s Robin. I’ve been trying to call you for over an hour.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry, I just got distracted. What’s up?”

“One of my men, Tuck, he came with us last night. He…we split up, broke out of our pairs last night ‘round the end of shift. We were supposed to meet at the station and…he never came.”

“ _Friar_ Tuck? That’s who the other guy was you brought in last night? He looked pretty tough to me when I saw him before your shift yesterday. He’s missing?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Crap,” she mumbled then looked at Belle as the other woman took books from the back room and placed them on the nearby shelves. “Hey, what time is it?”

Belle turned and looked at Emma then checked the wall clock behind the front desk. “Oh, uh…a little after ten.”

“Crap,” Emma said again, a little louder, and directed her next words into the phone. “Are you at the station now?”

“Waiting for you,” Robin responded and she stood up with the phone still pressed to her ear.

“Alright, I’ll be there in about ten minutes. Stay there,” she said as she grabbed the books most helpful to her and headed toward Belle. She hung up and held up the books in her hands.

“Can I take these?”

Belle furrowed her brow and looked from Emma to the books and back again.

“Yeah, sure. Um, I just got a library card system up and running, but I guess I’ll just write down how many books you’re taking. I can see you’re in a hurry.”

“Thanks,” Emma quickly said and rushed toward the door. “Oh, and um, I’ll send Henry by sometime so he can get a library card. And one for me too.”

Belle smiled and Emma smiled back over her shoulder before she left.

* * *

At the station, Emma saw Robin, Mulan, and Little John outside the main doors. She hopped out of her car and slammed the door shut before she fast-walked her way to the group.

“Tell me everything,” Emma said in place of a greeting.

“We paired off like you suggested and went around the town a couple of times. At first pass, the lights in the cabin were on. The second time around the lights were off. Just like the night before. There was maybe an hour or an hour and a half between passes for both pairs.”

Emma looked over the three of them.

“Mulan and Little John met up with us before the second pass and he wanted a more thorough look at the cabin. He suggested once we got closer to it the next time around we branch out and check the woods around the place, thought we should surround it. We haven’t seen him since then.”

“How long did you wait for him here?”

“Almost an hour,” Mulan answered. “Then we tried to look for him.”

“We stayed together when we went back there for him,” Robin continued. “He wasn’t there and the light was still off.”

Emma frowned and was about to say something when her phone rang again. She released the breath she had been ready to use on the words she had delayed saying and answered the phone.

“Yeah,” Emma sighed with annoyance. “Whoa, whoa. What? …Michael, hang—Okay, but—”

It only took a few more angrily said words rushed out of the mechanic’s mouth before Emma’s entire demeanor instantly shifted.

“Where,” Emma firmly stated, though it would have been a question if she’d been polite and not extremely serious. “Okay. I’m on my way.”

Emma ended the call and looked at the other three.

“I think we might find your guy soon,” she said.

The car situation was tricky since Emma and David were the only official police force in town, which made them the only ones allowed to drive the cruiser, but she tossed Robin the keys anyway and told him to follow her.

Robin took Little John in the cruiser with him and she told Mulan to get in the Bug with her. They arrived on the outskirts of the woods less than twenty minutes later and saw Michael Tillman by a tree at the edge of the tree line.

“How long ago did you find him,” Emma asked as she approached the Michael.

Robin, Mulan, and Little John followed her.

“Around seven, almost eight this morning. Found him when I came out to cut some fresh wood for my kids’ tree house.”

“Show us the body,” Emma said and motioned to the others to explain who ‘us’ included.

Michael acknowledged the other three as they walked up behind Emma and then he led the group where Emma demanded to be led. When the five of them stopped in front of a man on the ground, Robin was the first to do anything. His reaction came as a gasp and a murmured denial before he pushed ahead of everyone else and got closer to the body.

“Tuck,” he said as he knelt beside the stiff, dead man. “What…? How. How did this happen?”

Robin looked up and addressed Michael.

Michael shrugged.

“I don’t know,” he said before he turned to Emma. “I just found him.”

Robin hovered over Friar Tuck and inched himself closer and closer. When Emma saw him reach out, she stopped him.

“Don’t get any closer and don’t touch him,” she said.

Robin looked over his shoulder at her, confused and on the verge of tears.

“In order to find out how he died, we’ve got to look over the body. Touch him and we could lose evidence.”

“Evidence,” Mulan asked.

Emma looked back at Mulan and replied, “We don’t have the best evidence collection system around here, but if anything noticeable was left on or near the body it could tell us what happened.”

By the end of her explanation, she had addressed everyone there. A few seconds later, she stood next to Robin while he remained on the ground.

“Let me take a look and then you can do whatever you need to with him,” Emma calmly stated.

Robin took a moment and looked over Friar Tuck’s body again before he nodded his consent. A moment later, when Emma walked over to the other side of the body, Robin slowly rose to his feet.

Emma looked around at the surrounding dirt, stray logs, and occasional patch of weeds. There didn’t seem to be anything related to why Friar Tuck would be dead in the woods.

“There are no disturbances in the dirt,” Emma thought out loud. “No drag marks, no blood, no shoe prints or other tracks. Doesn’t seem like the body was moved here after death.”

Emma scanned over the body with as much focus as she’d put into her reading that morning. On the surface there was nothing to indicate cause of death or any physical harm. Tuck was on his back in the middle of nowhere like he had just wandered off and fallen asleep while gazing at the stars. Just as she was about to give her eyes a break, she glanced past his feet and realized one of his boots was almost halfway off. His white socks were covered with woodsy grime, but there were also unmistakable dark red stains present.

“There,” Emma pointed at his ankles and moved in. “There’s blood.”

Everyone except Michael Tillman approached the body while Emma lifted on of Friar Tuck’s pant legs to trace the blood back to its origin. When she’d pulled the pant leg up to Tuck’s knee, the source of the blood was revealed.

“What is that,” Mulan asked with a slightly surprised, though mostly still stoic per usual, expression.

“Looks like…some kind of bite,” Emma mused with a furrowed brow as she studied the two puncture wounds on Tuck’s shin.

“What kind of thing could have done that out here,” Little John asked just as Emma grabbed the other pant leg.

Out of curiosity, Emma lifted that pant leg as well and when she reached Tuck’s other knee, two more puncture wounds were uncovered. They were identical to the other two on Tuck’s right leg and roughly in the same position on either side of the lower leg.

“Living in the forest,” Robin started and pulled Emma’s attention away from the body, “I think I’ve seen something similar to this once or twice before, but not quite like this.”

“And what was it? Back then,” Emma asked him.

Robin gave the puncture wounds another look before he locked gazes with Emma again then said, “A snake bite.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know much about the Robin Hood stories or the different kinds of magic. Anything I included about either subject were just results from Google searches. 
> 
> More to come. Comments are always appreciated. :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regina gets into an uncomfortable situation when she's alone near the end of this chapter so proceed with caution. There's a potential trigger warning in that scene about threats from an abuser.

His veins were a grayish black color and his skin was sickly pale. Friar Tuck was void of life, dead on the ground in the woods with two bite marks, as presumed by Robin and confirmed by Emma since she had no other plausible theories. Snakes seemed the logical answer because what else could have caused puncture wounds like that? Vampires?  Emma may have believed in fairy tales since Henry convinced her the curse on the town was real, but vampires were another thing to believe in entirely and for Emma, they just couldn’t be real.

When she found out her mother was Snow White, she was shocked, but she came around. When she realized Regina was the Evil Queen, she was pissed because at the same time the only version of Regina she knew had also accidentally poisoned their son, but Emma moved past all that. When the Wicked Witch blew into the town with a vengeance, she was a little tired of just how many fairy tale characters actually existed and had all wanted something from someone in town, but she pushed on and did her best to make Storybrooke safe again. Then Elsa showed up and a month later, the movie based on the ice wielding Queen’s life hit theaters and Emma just lost it. Fairy tales: fine. They had been real and a part of her life for over a year and it just was what it was at that point. But vampires would shatter what she had left of her barely sane grip on reality.

In all the stories about vampires, Emma hadn’t heard about the type of deformation of a body, like what happened to Tuck, after being bitten by a creature of the night. That didn’t mean vampires weren’t actually real or that what happened to Friar Tuck after bitten by something, didn’t happen as a result of a vampire bite. It didn’t seem likely, though, and for that, Emma was grateful. Also, what vampire would bite a little above a person’s ankles? Thighs, neck, and chest she’d heard of, but between the feet and knees?

The coroner showed up with a man after Emma called and Tuck’s body was lifted into it. Thankfully, the town had a morgue, but the morgue and sheriff’s station were certainly small town. It worked well enough for the cases the town saw and hopefully it would work well enough for that particular case. Though, there really wasn’t much to investigate with snake bites, especially when Friar Tuck wasn’t even near the cabin Emma suspected was linked to Regina’s recent behavior. It did beg some questions, though. Was there more than one snake responsible for the bites? Why hadn’t anyone mentioned there were snakes in the woods? _Were there_ snakes in the woods? Emma had been out there plenty of times and she’d never seen or heard snakes. It was troubling, but nothing about the death or how Regina thought Leopold was back from the dead were concrete.

It had been an hour since she and the others recovered the body and while there really wasn’t a need for an autopsy, Emma asked for a sample from the snake bites to run tests on. It took some time, but the results identified poison in the bloodstream. All they had to do was run some lab work on the poison and narrow down what kind of snake they were looking for and then Emma could tell the public to avoid the woods and let them know what snake they needed to run from if they saw it to avoid any more deaths. That kind of lab work would take more time so she had some to kill while she waited for an update. There seemed to be no better, more efficient, way to do that than to read up on spells and dead people for Regina’s sake. She didn’t have a clue as to how a dead man could no longer be dead and she also knew nothing about King Leopold except that she was related to him, he used to be King, and Regina thought him to be a monster and her mother disagreed.

So that was where she started with her research as she waited for a report on the snakes bites: with Leopold’s history.

With such little sleep in her car the previous night parked outside of Regina’s place, Emma poured herself her first cup of coffee for the day just before noon. She guzzled down half before she had located a chapter on Leopold in one of the books she’d gathered from the library earlier that morning. She finished her first cup of coffee before she learned anything more about how Leopold White had ascertained the throne at a relatively young age. His father had relinquished the throne on his death bed a week before the man passed away.

It was just after Emma had read about Leopold’s coronation and engagement to Eva that she went to grab a second cup of coffee. After a few sips only seconds after she’d made herself comfortable at her desk again, she found out just how quickly information traveled in Storybrooke.

“Emma,” Snow called out, a little breathless by the sound of it.

Then there were little sounds Emma recognized as those made by babies. And when Snow walked into her line of sight she saw her baby brother in her mother’s arms.

“What’s this I hear about a body in the woods,” the other woman asked with a hint of panic in her voice.

Emma sighed and ran a hand through her hair just as Snow reached her office door. The dark haired woman leaned against the door frame and hoisted little Neal a tiny bit higher up in her arms.

“Uh, there was a body. In the woods,” Emma said as she looked between Snow and the baby.

Snow rolled her eyes.

“I _know_ that. I’d like to know more about what happened. Who was found?”

“You’re not the Mayor anymore. It’s not your job to know more than the information I release to the public.”

“Don’t get smart with me,” Snow scolded.

“I’m not— I’m just saying that the details aren’t relevant. And I don’t really know anything yet. The circumstances surrounding Friar Tuck’s death are suspicious, but until I know more about the poison—”

“Poison,” Snow loudly asked with wide eyes.

A familiar click-clack of heels closed in on Emma’s office. The blonde turned and watched Regina approach the vacated side of her office doorway.

“It appears information about the latest crime committed is being shared without the Mayor present,” Regina spoke more like her old self. “Care to catch me up, Sheriff?”

Regina momentarily raised her eyebrows at Emma when she looked away from Snow and the baby.

Emma tangled a hand in her hair and scratched her head before she began.

“There’s been a murder,” Emma informed her.

Regina’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline.

“Actually, I think maybe you can help me figure out what exactly happened,” Emma added.

“Really? How?”

“Well, you know a bit about poison, right?”

Regina gritted her teeth and her expression immediately darkened, her eyes sharp and angry.

“Miss Swan,” she growled. “I already don’t like where you seem to be heading with this.”

Emma shook her head. “No, no. Sorry, not—I’m not accusing you of anything and I hate bringing any of this up, but I’m looking for your knowledge, not you behind an evil scheme.”

Regina sighed.

“You want my knowledge about poison?”

“Yeah. I mean, maybe it’s just regular old venom, but that’s a poison, right?”

Regina knit her brow.

“Venom?”

“One of the Merry Men was killed by a snake bite. Two bites, actually, but I’m sure just one bite would have been fatal.”

Regina blanched and Emma frowned. The blonde cocked her head to the side.

“I take it from your reaction that you have a pretty good idea what kindof snake could do this,” Emma said.

Regina slowly nodded, her eyes glazed over and stared at the wall behind Emma with her gaze directed just above Emma’s shoulders.

“So what are we looking at,” Emma asked. “A rattlesnake? Cobra? Viper?”

Regina’s eyes flicked from the wall to Emma and focused.

“You said there were two bite marks,” Regina asked.

“Yeah, above both his ankles.”

“May I…May I see the body?”

“Uh, yeah. I actually took some pictures before the coroner grabbed him,” Emma said and pulled out her phone. She clicked around and flipped through a few things before she settled on an image and turned and held out the phone to the other woman.

Snow stood off to the side of the two of them and bounced and swayed baby Neal in her arms. It seemed to calm him as his eyes started to flutter closed.

Regina looked at a close-up picture of the bites that Emma presented her then flicked through the blonde’s gallery to see more photos. The next picture she saw was a wide shot of the body in the grass. After that, there was another close-up, though not as close as the picture of the bite marks, that showed Regina more detail to Friar Tuck’s face. When she saw his face, though, she gasped.

“Viper,” Regina answered Emma’s earlier question. “It’s a viper.”

Snow’s eyes widened.

Emma had no idea what that meant or what the importance of a viper seemed to be to Snow and Regina. “You know anything more than that?”

“It’s an Agrabahn viper,” Regina continued. “They’re from our world. Not the Enchanted Forest, but in a land across the sea from it.”

“Okay,” Emma slowly said, still not getting it. “So what’s with the face?”

“Sidney,” Snow said and turned Emma and Regina’s attention to her. “Agrabah. That’s where he’s from, isn’t he?”

Snow looked to Regina for confirmation.

“Yes,” Regina replied.

“So you think it’s him,” Emma asked her mother.

“My father was killed by an Agrabahn viper,” Snow added as she started to piece everything together in her head. “He disappeared right after my father’s death and he was always suspected of killing him.”

Snow looked at Regina again.

“But it wasn’t him. You framed him,” Snow said. “After I was thrown out of the palace and on the run from you, I started to doubt that story spread about the Genie. My father allowed him to stay with us. _You_ were the one that wanted _me_ gone. So it only made sense that you somehow found a way to kill my father to get to me.”

Regina mirthlessly laughed and shook her head.

“It wasn’t the only reason I had him killed.”

“ _Had_ him killed,” Emma noted.

“Yes, that’s right. I _had_ him killed,” Regina said to Emma then turned back to Snow. “Sidney really is responsible for your father’s death. He’s the one that took the snake into your father’s chambers while he was asleep and watched the man die. All I did was bring the snake to the palace and suggest I was going to use it to kill myself so I could be free from that life. He offered another way out and said the King should die, not me.”

“You were never going to kill yourself,” Snow argued.

“I hoped I didn’t have to,” Regina honestly admitted. “Sidney was good to me. I treated him nicely because that is how he treated me. After some time, I played on his feelings and made it seem like I was in love with him. When I decided to have the snake delivered to me, I had hoped he cared for me enough to save me from using the snake on myself. If he didn’t, I would’ve died, but at least I wouldn’t have had to suffer anymore.”

“You say that like living with me was so unbearable,” Snow almost started to cry.

“Must you always think what I do revolves around you? Yes, it was difficult to live with the person who’d betrayed my trust, which led to Daniel’s death, but life with your _father_ wasn’t life at all. It was _Hell_. Of course, not for you. He _loved_ you. He adored you and made you the selfish brat you were. After you two lost your mother, he gave you so much affection and attention. He never felt the same about me. I was just…” Regina trailed off and choked back tears that suddenly threatened to fall. “I was just his wife. I was used to help the kingdom look stable even after such a tragedy.”

That was what Regina chose to say instead of what actually made her sick to her stomach after all those years, what haunted her in her nightmares more often than not as of late. No one needed to know all of that. It was her past and her secret, her nightmare and cross to bear.

“So, wait,” Emma jumped back into the conversation. Snow and Regina redirected their attention to her. “Sidney knew about the snake. Did he know you set him up to take the fall?”

Regina grinned and laughed before she confessed, “Of course he did. You think all these years later and he still wouldn’t have known? Shortly after it was done, he came to tell me he was worried people would figure it out and he suggested we run. I told him everyone already suspected him and he pieced together how I’d made it look that way so no one ever implicated me.”

“So he knew you’d set him up,” Emma stated it like a fact more than she actually asked a question.

“I believe that’s what I just said,” Regina answered.

“And no one else knew it was really you except for him?”

“As far as I’m aware,” Regina replied. “But I suppose your mother has had her suspicions for a while.”

Snow furrowed her brow for a moment as she thought through the reason for Emma’s line of questioning until realization graced her features.

“You don’t think…” Snow started to ask, but didn’t quite finish her sentence as she waited to see her daughter’s reaction.

Emma seemed to already know where Snow was going with her question, though, and she just stared at her mother with wide eyes that looked like a definitive answer that said, _Yes, that’s exactly what I think._

“What,” Regina asked as she looked between the two of them. “What are you trying to say?”

“I think…maybe…Sidney had something to do with Tuck’s murder,” Emma slowly explained.

Regina’s eyes widened and her lips parted as her jaw almost went completely slack.

“He could have used the snake to send you a message,” Emma added.

Regina took a deep breath and slowly released it in a shuddered out sigh. She clenched and unclenched her fists as she gradually started to bring a hand up to her stomach.

“He wouldn’t. He _couldn’t_ ,” Regina insisted.

“Why not? He’s got motive,” Emma said.

“Because…because he practically _worships_ the ground I walk on. As much as he may have hated what I did, he still tried to be with me. He even made a wish so that he could be tethered to me in some way, but the wish backfired and that’s how he ended up in my mirror.”

“Maybe being imprisoned in your mirror whether it was his wish or not gave him time to think,” Snow supplied.

Regina shook her head.

“But… It just doesn’t make sense,” Regina continued to argue.

“Actually, it makes a lot of sense,” Emma said. “And, you know, maybe he used that candle to cast a spell so you’d have nightmares of Leopold. Then you’d be forced to remember what you did to him.”

Regina went from fear and disbelief to intense fury. She fixated fiery eyes on Emma with sharp determination to destroy the blonde, if it was the last thing she did.

“You’ve been having nightmares,” Snow asked, confused as she continued to bounce and sway baby Neal in her arms even though he looked completely dead to the world by then. “Is that why you think you saw him?”

Regina closed her eyes and huffed as she tried to keep her rising anger at bay. She dropped her hand from her stomach and tightly clenched both fists at her sides as she squeezed her eyes shut more firmly to will away the building magic that rose with her anger within her. It flooded inside of her and rushed to the surface while it begged to be unleashed.

Emma cringed when she saw the look on Regina’s face.

“Oh, you didn’t…you didn’t want anyone to know about that, did you,” Emma posed her question as a statement with a regretful and apologetic expression.

“For a while there I thought you were actually different,” Regina said, “but twice now you’ve proven to be just like your mother. You open your mouth and you act before you think of the consequences.”

“Regina, I’m sorry,” Emma said and took a step toward the brunette.

When Emma stepped forward, Regina held up a hand to stop her and then took a step back while she shook her head.

“Save it,” Regina spat out and started to leave the station.

“Wait, Regina—”

Emma tried to follow after her, but Regina disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke only a few steps later. Emma’s posture immediately crumbled at the same time she heavily sighed.

“Well that could’ve gone better,” Emma mumbled and slumped down in the nearest chair.

“Oh, honey, you didn’t mean to hurt her,” Snow tried to comfort her.

“Yeah, but somehow I always manage to.”

Snow looked at her with big, sympathetic eyes and almost started to say something else when she reached out a hand and tried to place it on top of Emma’s on the blonde’s knee.

Emma pulled her hand away and stood.

“I need to find Sidney and ask him a few questions,” Emma said before she walked right through the space Regina disappeared from and left the building on foot.

* * *

Regina appeared in her foyer in the same purple smoke she disappeared in at the station. Her house was quiet, as usual, but as soon as she arrived she felt a chill within her and an odd and unwelcome tingle that trembled down her spine.

“Neat trick,” an all too familiar voice said from a short distance behind her.

Regina whirled around on the spot and stared at the man in front of her dining room table with a wide open mouth and apprehension-filled eyes.

“I suppose you learned it before my demise,” he asked and slowly started to approach her.

Regina matched his steps. Every time he walked forward, she walked back.

“How is this possible,” Regina asked as she looked him over from head to toe and back again. He looked as he did before his funeral and while even magic could do many, many things she was told time and time again that it couldn’t bring back the dead.

“I imagine the same way you are able to vanish in the blink of an eye with a simple hand gesture, My Wife.”

Regina instantly felt bile rise from her stomach to her throat at the use of a title she never wanted.

“Magic,” Leopold continued.

“Magic doesn’t bring people back. It can’t.”

“Maybe not the samemagic as you’ve been taught,” he said as a smug smirk slowly started to appear on his face. “But I assure you, Regina, I am very much real. I do not only exist in your nightmares anymore. I am flesh and bone, once again alive and well, like you and the rest of the people in this town. Although, I suppose you aren’t faring well like everyone else lately, are you?”

Regina gulped and realized too late she had backed her way into a corner when her back lightly hit the front door and she was trapped in place as Leopold quickened his pace to close the distance between them fast enough to hinder her escape.

“I also have to admit that I’m not exactly like everyone else these days either,” Leopold added as he stared her down, close enough to the brunette by then to watch his breath blow through wisps of her shoulder length hair. “I am not exactly as I once was. With death comes a change I can’t even begin to describe. When I first returned, I wasn’t ready for destruction. I was only surprised to be back. But it didn’t take long before I felt this sense of dissatisfaction. It was as if I had unfinished business to take care of and nothing would feel better than to handle it.”

Regina tried her hardest to regain composure, to not look as afraid of him as she felt. She was stronger than she was before, stronger than him. He may have really been back from the dead, but as far as she knew he still didn’t have magic. She did.

And yet, she stood frozen in fear with her back against the door. He was the part of her past she thought she’d managed to bury far faster and far better than she’d buried the Evil Queen. Well, he wasn’t buried anymore. Not by a long shot. It made her terrified of what exactly that meant in general and what, specifically, that meant for her. She didn’t want to be a victim again, but she wasn’t entirely sure she could avoid it. Even if he never touched her again, he was already in her head and because of that she still felt covered in him in the worst way a person could feel that way.

“I want to make you a promise,” Leopold started to speak again, “and unlike my vows at our wedding, I will keep this promise. I will take everything from you. You stole away my life and denied me the chance to watch my daughter succeed. I’ve been told of what you did to her, how you made her run from you while you ruled over our people, how you kept her from her love. When I agreed to take you as my wife, I thought you were too innocent and sweet. _Pure_.

“It is upon my rebirth that I see now you are no different from your mother. You _were_ pure once, but over the years every part of you became as tainted as that heartless whore Cora and you killed me to truly be Queen after acquiring the title through our marriage. Because we both know without me you would have been nothing. So it seems that’s all you wanted from our arrangement and once you had it, you made it yours and insured you were seen as more than just my companion. Maybe so you were no longer thought of as my companion. Maybe you wanted them to see you, see that _you_ had power.”

Regina finally closed her mouth, but only to swallow down tears as her eyes began to water. She balled her fists at her sides and tried to keep her breathing regulated, though she was on the verge of an emotional break.

“Then it must eat you alive to know you let me in to your life, let me get close to your precious daughter,” Regina threw back in his face with a slightly raspy voice. “Well, I bet it would just _devastate_ you to know that even she isn’t as pure as you and Eva hoped she would always remain. There’s a spot on her heart. A _dark_ spot that speaks to the darkness within her.”

Leopold snarled and his hand shot directly up to her neck. He squeezed her throat and growled as he moved in closer so their noses brushed.

“If it is true then it is your fault and you will not get away with it. Stay away from my family, Regina.”

His hands were tight around her neck. Her eyes started to bulge from the panic and lack of oxygen while she stuck around to listen to his threat. When he applied even more pressure, his fingers thick and heavy around her airway like lead, she refused to listen to anything else. Even though she hated to give him the small victory of watching her run from him, she decided she wanted to live—even she had to live through pain yet again— more than she wanted to remain trapped as he held her too hatefully and possessively in his murderous grip. She fled in another cloud of her magic.

Her magic dissipated when she stood in the cobweb-riddled basement of the Mills mausoleum and before the final tendrils of purple smoke could fade away above her, Regina gasped and bent at the waist. She reached out and walked toward the nearest surface until she gripped the edge of a stone cubby-hole on a wall lined with cubby-holes, some occupied by trinkets from the Enchanted Forest and others—like the one she clung to as she gasped and coughed repeatedly in an attempt to breathe again—were vacant.

After a couple of minutes, she calmed herself and controlled her breathing then slowly sank to the ground. She rested her back against the wall of cubbies and pulled her knees up to her chest. She placed her hands on her knees and hesitated as she looked up at the ceiling of her vault for a moment before she clawed at her pant legs then took a deep breath with heavy lungs. She released it in a loud cry while she let the tears of anguish and fear from both her past and present roll down her face.

She shuddered against the wall as she cried and tightened and loosened and tightened her grip on her pant legs. So many nights she’d cried in silence or not at all. So many nights, even when she awoke to the sight of a modernized room in Storybrooke, she bolted upright in bed in a cold sweat. There were an abundance of times she hadn’t been able to express all that she felt about her situation and by the time she created the town with the help of The Dark Curse, she had pushed down those feelings too much for too long. With Leopold’s unholy return, it all welled up within her and then burst out of her.

* * *

Emma made it to her car before she realized she had no idea where Sidney lived. So she sat outside the station in her bright yellow Bug and waited until her mother cleared out of the station before she used her resources as sheriff to look into the man’s records. Unfortunately for her, a little over five minutes had passed and Snow still hadn’t walked out the front doors yet. Emma wondered if her mother knew the same thing she did and knew that if she waited long enough, the blonde would return for the information she needed.

After another few minutes, Emma sighed and let her head fall back against the headrest of her seat. She closed her eyes and sighed and when she opened them again, she leaned forward and started her car. There was one other place that might have the resources, or maybe even some paperwork, on Sidney Glass.

As she started to drive off, she caught a glimpse of her mother in her rear view mirror as the raven-haired woman reluctantly made her way to her station wagon with baby Neal still cradled in her arms. Emma semi-scoffed through her teeth and shook her head as she headed straight for Regina’s office and then allowed herself to wonder if and hope that she would see the brunette there. She knew not to expect anything, but Regina had vanished from the station so it was a possibility that instead of going home she went into the office. Regardless of what was going on with the other woman, Emma knew that at some point Regina would go back to work. She wasn’t sure that Regina would do it so soon, but she really hoped she had. It might have been the best thing for her given the nightmares and the recent murder. Routine, consistency, moral support. They could all be the key to helping cope with everything.

But, of course, Emma knew Regina well enough to know that no one resisted assistance more than the mayor. Regina wasn’t in her office and Anna had thankfully taken the hint the other day and hadn’t come in for work either. Town Hall was a little on the quiet side, but it was still wide open to the public even if their Mayor wasn’t around. There were council members and other important people, and even the janitorial service, still at work so everything except the Mayor’s section of Town Hall was unlocked. All the information Emma needed and could possibly find there, however, was within Regina’s closed office.

She really didn’t want to invade the brunette’s work space—even though she’d broken in to the woman’s office once before—because Regina was more on the fragile side than not lately. An invasion of privacy, even at work, seemed like the exact wrong way to go about the other woman’s situation. But she needed to talk to Sidney as soon as possible and she’d already committed to ditching the sheriff’s station to avoid her mother so she did what she had to.

She picked the lock to Regina’s office.

She would be in and out and Regina never had to know. She wasn’t going to rifle through anything even remotely personal and everything would be returned to its proper place so it wasn’t like she just barged into Regina’s home and raided her underwear drawer. At least that was what Emma told herself a second before the lock clicked and she was granted access to the office. She had to convince herself it wasn’t a big deal, even if it sort of was, because otherwise she would only take that much longer to track down the number one suspect in a murder investigation. She may have been the head of law enforcement in a town full of fairy tales the outside world had no record of, but a man was still dead. He deserved justice and people needed to be kept safe from his killer. Last she checked, she was also the Savior and that was what a Savior did. They saved people. Factor in the title of Sheriff and it was officially her job, and not just some prophecy, to get done what needed to be done in order to get a murderer off the streets.

She pulled open the office door and the alarm immediately went off in a loud wail. So much for Regina never having to know. She had no idea what the security code was so Emma just entered the office and swiftly made her way to the filing cabinet. Like the criminal she used to be, Emma efficiently flipped through manila folder after manila folder in the cabinet drawers starting from the top drawer to the bottom. Her nimble fingers along with her impressive processing ability—at least, it was impressive when it came to stealing and cop or theft related attention to detail—she managed to land on a file labeled “Swan, Emma”. It wasn’t what she was really looking for, but she knew the only reason Regina even had a file on her was due to the man she wanted to find.

She pulled out the file and flitted through the photos and tried to find any kind of paper trail that could somehow trace back to Sidney. There was nothing. She sighed out of frustration and dropped the file on top of the cabinet drawer that remained open right in front of her. After a moment, she closed the folder and went to slip it back into its place among the other files when a certain file struck her with a sense of intrigue.

Near the middle of the heap of files in that particular drawer there was a folder labeled “R. PROPERTIES”. Out of all the other folders it was the one with the least specific title and bells rang and flags waved in Emma’s mind. She wasn’t sure what “R. PROPERTIES” meant or if it had anything to do with what she needed to know, but clearly it was something worthy of a curious mind inquiring more information than the file label revealed.

She slipped her own file back into the drawer and picked out the new folder. She opened it and saw several papers stapled together like a single packet of information right on top. She set the folder down, wide open with more inside of it, and grabbed the packet. She flipped through it and noticed they were all addresses. Some addresses were highlighted and others weren’t, but a few of the non-highlighted addresses had letters placed next to them in the margin of the paper. There were only two letters used in the margin: M and X. None of it made sense to her so she kept looking and set aside the packet of papers for what else was in the folder.

The next thing she found were pamphlets and brochures of places Emma had seen in passing through the town, but hadn’t stuck out too much in her mind. They were all of condos and townhouses that had been recently renovated and some were given new names. One of the places that wasn’t a condo or townhouse was the third pamphlet on top of the larger brochures. It was for a building that was one of two recreational centers in town, but according to the pamphlet it was more recently referred to as a physical rehabilitation center.

Emma frowned and furrowed her brow. She scanned over the rest of the pamphlets and brochures again and noticed that all of them were renamed as some kind of rehabilitation center. Emma figured that must have been what the “R” stood for in “R. PROPERTIES”.

 _Regina’s remodeling the town to include a variety of rehabilitation options,_ Emma asked herself.

Just as she was about to abandon the brochures for another few items within the file, which was more paperwork that looked kind of like permits from the glances she caught while still looking at the pamphlets, one of the last places mentioned in a brochure grabbed her attention.

The sign in front of the lot of condos that were sectioned together like a small grid of four decent sized houses read: Storybrooke Transitional Living. Translation: Regina had apparently converted one of the nicer looking condo spaces into a halfway house. That was new and interesting information to Emma. She thought about what that meant and why Regina would approve, or maybe even insist upon, all those changes when Emma heard mumbled conversation and footsteps.

She remembered she’d been in the office for a while with the annoying alarm still screeching about the security breech, so she closed the folder and kept it as she then closed the cabinet drawer. She went to a window and sure enough it happened to be the same window she busted the last time she broke into the office over a year ago. Instead of breaking the glass, though, Emma unlocked the window and slipped through it just before two guys, which she assumed were from the alarm company, walked into the room.  In seconds, she was in the clear and ran off with the “R. PROPERTIES” file in her hand. She still needed to find Sidney, but in that moment she needed to find Regina first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Definitely more Emma and Regina scenes coming up. So sorry if this seems too slow burn for some of you, but I promise they'll get a little bit closer in the next couple of chapters.


End file.
